Painter Frank Auerbach, who fled the Nazis and became a major artist, dies at 93

"Frank Auerbach, who fled Nazi Germany for Britain as a child and became one of the major artists of the 20th century, has died aged 93. Auerbach's gallery, Frankie Rossi Art Projects, said on Tuesday the artist died at his home in London the day before. Born in Berlin in 1931, Auerbach came to England in 1939 on one of the Kindertransport trains carrying Jewish children from Nazi-occupied Europe in the months before World War II. Both his parents died in the Holocaust."

"He attended a boarding school in England alongside other war orphans, and after studies at St. Martin's School of Art and the Royal College of Art in London, he devoted the remaining seven decades of his life to painting. He lived and worked in the same north London studio from 1954 until his death and, according to his gallery, worked 364 days a year."

"Along with the other School of London post-war artists including Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and Leon Kossoff, he focused on figurative painting regardless of changing artistic fashions. Auerbach slathered canvasses in thick layers of paint to produce near-abstract but recognizable forms, becoming one of the key figures in British art."

Read at www.independent.co.uk