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Lucian Freud

20
Availability: February 8, 2025
Witness unapologetic portraits and precision worthy of a laboratory in this exploration into the oeuvre of renowned figurative painter Lucian Freud. A master of the human form who applied the same frank style and psychological rigor to sitters as varied as the Queen, Kate Moss, and an obese and naked job center supervisor. Direct and disarming, Freud’s portraiture penetrates beneath flaws and folds of the flesh to reveal what lies within.
Hardcover8.3 x 10.2 in.1.40 lb96 pages
Lucian Freud

Lucian Freud

20

Unflinching truth

Portraits which scrutinized beneath the skin

Lucian Freud (1922–2011) was interested in the telling of truths. Always operating outside the main currents of 20th-century art, the esteemed portrait painter observed his subjects with the regimen and precision of a laboratory scientist. He recorded not only the blotches, bruises, and swellings of the living body, but also, beneath the flaws and folds of flesh, the microscopic details of what lies within: the sensation, the emotion, the intelligence, the bloom, and the inevitable, unstoppable decay.

Despite rejecting parallels between him and his renowned grandfather, the correlation between Lucian Freud’s sitting process for portraiture and Sigmund Freud’s psychotherapy sessions is a fascinating element to this figurative oeuvre. Despite the thickness of the impasto surfaces, Freud’s portraits of subjects as varied as the Queen, Kate Moss, and an obese job center supervisor penetrate the physicality of the body with a direct and often disarming insight. The result is as much a psychological interrogation as it is an uneasy examination of the relationship between artist and model.

This book brings together some of Freud’s most outstanding and unapologetic portraits, to introduce an artist widely considered one of the finest masters of the human form.
The author

Sebastian Smee is a Pulitzer Prize–winning art critic at The Washington Globe. He has contributed essays to several books on Lucian Freud, and his articles have been published in The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian and The Spectator.

Lucian Freud
Hardcover21 x 26 cm0.63 kg96 pages

ISBN 978-3-8365-6061-0

Edition: Spanish

ISBN 978-3-8365-6062-7

Edition: French

ISBN 978-3-8365-6063-4

Edition: English
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Born back in 1985, the Basic Art Series has evolved into the best-selling art book collection ever published. Each book in TASCHEN’s Basic Art series features:
• a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance
• a concise biography
• approximately 100 illustrations with explanatory captions

5

/5

3 Ratings

Must have if you like Freud

Neringa,October 27, 2021
Freud always impressed me and this book gives even more knowledge and never seen before artworks.

Picturesque

Emanuele,October 27, 2021
And detailed

Gelungenes Geschenk

Louis,January 29, 2022
Ich habe diesen Kauf meinem Stiefvater zum Geburtstag geschenkt. Die Illustrationen haben großen Anklang gefunden. Der Versand war unproblematisch.