Representing Great Britain at the 1995 Venice Biennale, British figurative painter Leon Kossoff captured the soul of post-war London with expressive portraits and cityscapes that conveyed a deep connection to people and place.
Read MoreBorn in 1926 into a working-class Russian-Jewish family in the borough of Islington, London, United Kingdom, Leon Kossoff was the seventh child of culturally ambivalent parents who fled religious persecution in the Ukraine. They considered artists to be 'wastrels', Kossoff recalls.
Kossoff's encounter with painting at London's National Gallery opened 'a world of feeling about life' he had yet to experience. Upon relocating to Norfolk in rural England during World War II, Kossoff, then 13 years old, was finally encouraged to pursue art by his host family.
Kossoff returned to London in 1943 to study art at Saint Martin's School of Art and took evening drawing classes at Toynbee Hall. During the war, he worked alongside painter and orphan Frank Auerbach, then employed at the Kossoff family's bakery, who later became a close friend.
Expressing a distaste for illustration, the two transferred to Borough Road Polytechnic in 1950 and studied under British painter David Bomberg, who encouraged an 'intense visual and emotional engagement' with the subject. For Kossoff, this subject found form in his nearby surroundings—the city where he lived, friends and family.
Expressing the painter's attachments to his native London, Leon Kossoff's portraits and cityscapes render the city's industrial grit and urbanising streets with heavily worked surfaces, atmospheric palettes, and expressive strokes.
City Rooftops (1957)
In the 1950s, Kossoff worked from studios across North and East London, painting the city as observed. Early drawings like City Rooftops (1957) depict the heavy industrial grime swallowing local buildings, whose geometric forms are covered in a thick layer of coal-shade charcoal.
Kossoff attended the Royal College of Art in 1953, eventually earning his first exhibition at Helen Lessore's former Beaux Arts Gallery in Mayfair. By 1959, he taught at three London institutions and showed work alongside figurative painters such as Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, and Keith Critchlow.
Portrait of Mother Asleep (1963)
In the same years, Kossoff and Auerbach took turns to paint each other's portraits. Art historian Alistair Smart notes a shared tendency in their work to apply and scrape away thick layers of paint as to resemble 'icing on a cake'.
Portrait of Mother Asleep (1963)—an example of Kossoff's heavily worked surfaces—features the artist's mother asleep in a chair. Thick strokes of impasto in muddied shades allude to the darkness of human experience, while hints of pink and beige enliven the matriarch's feminine figure.
From the 1970s onward, Kossoff opted for lighter, bright palettes to depict London's transforming cityscape. East London landmarks featured abundantly across his work, capturing the painter's optimism at the urbanisation of his neighbourhood at the time.
Demolition of YMCA Building No. 2, Spring 1971 (1971)
Capturing the demolition of a 1911 community centre, the oil-on-board painting shows an open construction site rendered with light burgundies and ash beiges. Despite evoking a naturally devastated landscape, or an open cadaver, the open composition and significant shift to lighter tones suggest a welcoming outlook toward post-war reconstruction.
Human Clay (1976) — School of London
Curated by R.B. Kitaj, the landmark exhibition at London's Hayward Gallery established the School of London as the new avantgarde—consisting of Kossoff, Auerbach, Freud, and Bacon, among others—that revived figuration amid the popularisation of Minimalism and Conceptualism.
Committed to painting from observation, Kossoff wandered between his studio and the streets of London, its buildings and public swimming baths. He was known to always work with a model, who could sit for days or years, as the painter noticed different things with every look.
Kossoff represented Great Britain at the 1995 Venice Biennale, showcasing a selection of paintings that included portraits, nudes, and cityscapes. The following year, Tate Gallery held a retrospective of his work, attesting to the painter's lasting influence.
'London, like the paint I use, seems to be in my bloodstream,' Kossoff wrote. In his later years, the painter's palette turned softer, reflecting on nature and death. His last paintings, 'Cherry Tree in Spring' (2015), showed the deteriorating branch of a cherry tree at different stages.
The painter supported the structure with stakes, as if a metaphor for his own inability to paint since 2012, representing the intersecting branches with soft strokes of a pale khaki shade.
Kossoff passed away in 2019 at the age of 92. According to the artist, who rarely conducted interviews or appeared in the press, his career had 'been an experiment in self-education', never quite arriving at a proper drawing.
Leon Kossoff declined an appointment as Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
Leon Kossoff's work has been exhibited widely in Europe, the U.K., and the United States.
Select solo exhibitions include: Xavier Hufkens, Brussels (2024); Piano Nobile, London (2019); Timothy Taylor, New York; Frieze Masters, London (both 2013—2014); and National Gallery, London (2007); Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art and National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (all 2000—2001); and Tate Gallery, London (1995—1996).
Selected group exhibitions include: L.A. Louver, California (2020—2021); Marlborough Graphics, London (2020); Tate Britain, London (2018); The Getty Museum, Los Angeles (2016); Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam (2014—2015); Museum der Moderne, Salzburg (2008—2009); Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh (2007—2008); and 46th Venice Biennale (1995—1996).
A major touring retrospective of his work travelled to Annely Juda Fine Art, London (2021); Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York (2022); and L.A. Louver, Los Angeles (2022).
The artist's estate is represented by Xavier Hufkens, Brussels and Annely Juda Fine Art, London.
Elaine YJ Zheng | Ocula | 2023
