Frank Auerbach (b.1931, Berlin) has made some of the most resonant, inventive and perpetually alive paintings, both of people and of the urban landscapes near his studio in Camden Town, London. His intentions have been consistent: ‘What I wanted to do was to record the life that seemed to me to be passionate and exciting and disappearing all the time’.

This publication will accompany a retrospective of Auerbach’s work at Tate Britain and the Bonn Kunstmuseum in 2015. The exhibition is curated by Catherine Lampert (who has sat for Auerbach since 1978) in close consultation with the artist, and will provide a wholly fresh survey of Auerbach’s career.

This book will be the only accessible, affordable survey of Auerbach’s work on the market. Including a new essay by art historian T. J. Clark, the book also features statements from the artist and previously unseen documentary photographs.

T. J. Clark is emeritus professor of art history at the University of California, and the author of the seminal The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and his Followers (1985), as well as Farewell to an Idea: Episodes from a History of Modernism (1999), The Sight of Death: An Experiment in Art Writing (2006) and Lowry and the Painting of Modern Life (2013).