Frank Auerbach
1963-64
Oil paint on board
68.6 x 57.8 cm
Drawing and painting are ‘fundamentally part of the same process’ for Frank Auerbach. This work is one of a small group of paintings of Stella West in which Auerbach drew with paint in particularly inventive ways. He squeezed lines of coloured oil paint directly from the tube to create his portrait head, bringing his depiction of West to life after months of reworking the image. Around that time, Auerbach was finally able to afford a wider range of oil paints and he began to explore a new world of colour after a decade of working largely in earth tones or black and white.