Exhibition "Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and the London School"

Curator: Danila Bulatov, chief curator of the art department of the countries of Europe and America of the XIX-XX centuries.

More than a quarter of a century ago, a monograph exhibition by Francis Bacon was held in Moscow, individual works by artists such as Frank Auerbach or Leon Kossof were presented at various exhibitions. For the first time, the Russian audience will have the opportunity to truly and deeply get acquainted with such an important phenomenon of world art history as the London School.

The exhibition "Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and the London School" will unfold on the main exhibition axis of the Pushkin Museum. A.S. Pushkin and will consist of 6 sections. The exhibition will feature about 80 paintings and graphic works by the most famous British artists of the London School from the collection of the Tate Gallery.

The term London School was coined by artist Ronald Brooks China in 1976. He united a group of artists, which included Frank Auerbach, David Bomberg, Francis Bacon, Ronald China, Leon Kossof, Lucien Freud, Michael Andrews. In contrast to abstractionism and conceptualism, they developed the tradition of figurative painting. The focus of the masters of the London school was the human body, the transfer of fragility and at the same time the vitality of which is devoted to many works of artists.

British painters in the 1950s were alien to the fashion of abstraction, while remaining faithful to figurative painting. Along with appealing to the human figure, artists of the London School are characterized by an interest in the landscape genre. The images of London they created are connected with personal stories and subjective perceptions of the city, in a metaphorical sense they turn out to be original existential self-portraits of their authors.

Artists at the London School developed complex plots, paying particular attention to the dynamics and aesthetics of social relations. Bacon has repeatedly spoken about the desire to get away from the narrative, but his work retains an ongoing story about his personal life, relationships and losses. And Michael Andrews and Ronald China, in turn, created images, including literary sources, photographs and works of other artists.

The exhibition has already been successfully held in London, Los Angeles, Malaga and Aarhus. In total, more than 600 thousand spectators visited it.