Bacon and Kossoff. Inventing a figure

Exhibition "Inventing a figure"brings together a selection of paintings by Francis Bacon and Leon Kossoff, which demonstrate a radically new realism that has been developed by both artists throughout their career.

For decades after World War II, a number of artists from London re-invented figurative painting in Britain. Although they were later called the “London School”, they were never the official “group of artists”, but rather strong people who were friends with each other and rejected the prevailing avant-garde styles - abstraction, conceptualism and minimalism - in favor of fine objects and painting techniques. Despite the stylistic diversity, these artists decided to color the people and places of the city around them with raw energy and longing, depicting the complexities of the human situation and the urban landscape wounded by wartime bombings. The most prominent artists associated with this group of artists were Michael Andrews, Frank Auerbach, Francis Bacon, Lucien Freud and Leon Kossoff.