Frank Auerbach died last Monday, 11 November, at the age of 93. Known for his portraits of women and scenes of everyday life of London neighbourhoods, he was long associated with neo-expressionist and figurative aesthetics. Born in Berlin, he fled the war and was sent to England in 1939 at the age of just eight, leaving behind his Jewish parents, who died in a concentration camp in Germany.

In London he studied at the Hampstead Garden Suburb Institute (1947), St Martin’s School of Art (1948-52), and the Royal College of Art (1952-55). He was interested in the sensations and expressions of people and their physical characteristics, exploring the weight, presence and positions of bodies, but moving away from mimetic representation and using the ‘impasto’ technique, which consists of using thick layers of paint, giving his works a materiality that was considered closer to sculpture than painting. His aesthetic is linked to the ‘London School’, drawing close to the work of its most prominent representatives, such as Leon Kossoff, Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud, with whom he was friends.

‘Head of E.O.W.’ (1956-57), part of the CAM Collection, is one of Frank Auerbach’s portraits of one of the three female models who most often posed for the artist. This drawing is part of a long experimental series of portraits the artist developed over more than twenty years.