Lucian Freud: A Life

Designer Holborn (William Eggleston) and Dawson, director of the Lucian Freud Archive, deliver a stunning visual biography of British painter Lucian Freud (1922–2011), for whom painting was an effort to “try and move the senses by giving an intensification of reality.” Employing rarely published private photographs, interviews, and painted portraits, the authors explore Freud’s life, career, and influences decade by decade. Born in 1922 in Berlin, the grandson of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, Freud and his parents escaped the Nazis and moved to London in 1933, where he fell in love with art. First studying with Cedric Morris and focusing on figurative art, Freud fell under the spell of painter Francis Bacon in 1945 and began to create raw, fearless, and intense portraits that often took months to complete. By the 1990s, he turned to monumental art, creating a series of nude paintings of performance artist Leigh Bowery and others. In the 2000s, Freud painted portraits of such figures as Queen Elizabeth II and artist David Hockney (the authors include images of the artwork itself, as well as photos of him producing them). Thought provoking and engrossing, this lavishly illustrated book is a must for Freud’s fans. (Sept.)