Frank Auerbach
1957
Charcoal and chalk on paper
76.2 x 55.9 cm
Frank Auerbach reworked this drawing almost to the point of destruction, scarring and patching the paper before finally resolving the image. The year, ‘1957’, appears twice on the right-hand side, partially erased and worked over – evidence of the long duration of the work’s making. The rough and cratered form of Leon Kossoff’s head conveys a feeling of wounding and endurance. Auerbach commented that, in London during the decade or so after the end of the Second World War, ‘there was a sense of survivors scurrying around a ruined city’. The drawing can be seen as a distinctly post-war portrait that carries themes of vulnerability and resilience.