From Library Journal
Lucian Freud's figurative paintings are hard to forget-his distinctive brushwork, color combinations, and unique poses create a landscape of translucent skin that is alarming in its frankness yet beautiful in its presentation. This catalog, accompanying a show that will travel through London, Barcelona, and Los Angeles, features key works from each phase of his six-decade-long career, from 1939 to the present. More than 140 full-color illustrations of paintings, drawings, and etchings accompany an essay by Feaver, as well as an extensive bibliography and chronology. A curator, writer, and critic, Feaver provides a historical backdrop and analysis that helps the reader navigate across the decades of Freud's career. This work joins other catalogs (notably Robert Hughes's Lucian Freud: Paintings and Catherine Lampert's Lucian Freud: Recent Works) in exposing the artist and the evolution of his art, but it incorporates a much greater range of the still-productive artist's life and work. The result is well written, beautifully designed, and recommended for all academic, public, and museum libraries.Kraig A. Binkowski, Delaware Art Museum, WilmingtonCopyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Publisher's Weekly
"Lucian Freud's figurative paintings are hard to forget...Well written, beautifully designed, and recommended..."


Book Description
Over six decades, Lucian Freud has built up a reputation as one of the most distinctive contemporary figurative artists. Freud's startling and disconcerting portraits and nudes have a haunting quality that makes them impossible to forget. This stunning book brings together key works from Freud's entire career, including over 140 paintings, drawings, and etchings, some new, and many never before exhibited.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Now in his eightieth year, Lucian Freud is widely regarded as one of the greatest living painters. Over six decades, he has redefined portraiture and the nude, producing works of extraordinary vitality and presence. His subjects are often friends, family, fellow painters, lovers, and children. "I paint people," he has said, "not because of what they are like, not exactly in spite of what they are like, but how they happen to be."" "Born in Berlin in 1922, Freud came to England with his family in 1933. Along with his friend Francis Bacon, he rose to prominence in London in the 1950s. He has lived and worked in the city ever since." "Published to accompany the largest retrospective of Freud's work to date, which travels from Tate Britain in London to Fundacio "la Caixa" in Barcelona and The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, this lavishly illustrated book brings together key works from his entire career, including over 180 paintings, etchings and drawings, some not previously published." Designed in close collaboration with the artist, the book includes an essay by the writer and curator William Feaver, a contribution by the painter Frank Auerbach, and a detailed bibliography.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal