Alas, Freud is dead - aged 88.He was loyal to his friends and would come to their private views; l clocked him a few times when mingling with the great. He was ashen grey presumably from never coming into daylight though perhaps it was some illness - looked like it, pernicious anemia or worse. Amazed hes lasted this long, outliving most of said friends.
But what a painter, eh. Most painters can slam on a likeness with lots of paint but he went beyond that, somehow. It wasn't that the work became sculptural or relied on tricks of the knife, it was something other. And nothing to do with how the painting looked.
He belonged to the group of artists that escaped Nazi Germany and took British nationality, perforce Jewish - they were the yeast of British art, the reason for its phenomenal success aesthetically and intellectually.
I'm sure that most of Tilling is grieving today.
1 comment:
Beautifully written. He was one of the greats.
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