Friends and Relations: Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach, Michael Andrews

Gagosian presents Friends and Relations: Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach, Michael Andrews. Taking as its inspiration a famous John Deakin photograph of the four painters in Soho in 1963 (along with much younger painter Timothy Behrens, the subject of a portrait by Freud that is on view), the exhibition elucidates the connections between their respective practices and also features some of the artists’ portraits of each other.

Curated by art historian Richard Calvocoressi, Friends and Relations contextualizes key works by four era-defining artists. Featuring more than forty paintings from private and public collections, it positions Freud—in the centenary year of his birth—as the grouping’s central figure. Each painter was aware of the others’ practices, to the extent of occasionally competing with one another, but of the four, Freud alone collected his friends’ work. At various times throughout his life, he owned paintings by Bacon. At his death, he owned sixteen by Auerbach and one small oil by Andrews. The exhibition includes two portraits by Auerbach formerly in Freud’s collection, on loan from British museums.