Frank Auerbach: The Charcoal Heads at the Courtauld Gallery

Frank Auerbach’s portraits emerge from the darkness of charcoal – an image repeatedly created and destroyed.

Part of the ‘School of London’ movement alongside the likes of Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud, Auerbach is considered one of the most important artists of twentieth-century Britain. 

He’s still alive today, producing streams of work, but a new exhibition at The Courtland, in Somerset House, The Strand, looks back at some of his charcoal portraits from the 50s and 60s – considered to be some of his early masterpieces.

From February 9 until May 27, Frank Auerbach: The Charcoal Heads will showcase a series of hauntingly beautiful, large-scale drawings by Auerbach, presented together for the first time. 

Auerbach spent months creating these portrait heads in charcoal and chalk, reworking them during numerous sessions with his sitters. 

The drawings will be shown together alongside a selection of closely related paintings he made of the same sitters. 

Frank Auerbach: The Charcoal Heads is at the Courtauld Gallery, from February 9 until May 27. 

Pictured top: The Charcoal Heads (Picture: Frank Auerbach / courtesy of Frankie Rossi Art Projects, London)