The death of the artist Frank Auerbach this year prompted a torrent of tributes from key art world figures highlighting the remarkable life and legacy of the prolific German-born painter who worked from the same London studio for 70 years. It seemed like everything that needed to be said about Auerbach had already been stated in the reams of coverage. But Auerbach’s son, filmmaker Jake, helpfully sets the record straight about his dad in the UK newspaper The Observer. “A few persistent myths seem to hang around him and they are worth rebutting. Myth No 1: ‘Auerbach produces pictures that are weighed down with thick paint’,” Jake Auerbach wrote, stressing that the paintings haven’t been “thick” for more than 50 years.
Next misconception busted—”Myth No 2 (the one that had him grumbling the most): ‘Frank Auerbach came to England on the Kindertransport’. He did not. His sponsorship was thanks to a private act of generosity by the writer Iris Origo and was entirely unconnected to Kindertransport,” says Jake. And then we move on to the final bit of Frank folklore to be turned on its head. “Myth No 3: ‘Frank does nothing but paint and finds it difficult to talk.’ Frank described himself as a ‘beast in a burrow’ but his reputation as a hermit was overstated; he ate out, loving especially his local, the Daphne, in Camden; he went to exhibitions, to the theatre, to the cinema and he read voraciously. He loved pub quizzes and there were a few times when he would join me and friends as a team member,” says his son, giving a true picture of this late lamented art titan.
