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©
Frank Auerbach, courtesy de Marlborough Fine Art
Frank Auerbach

The Shell Building Site, from the Thames

1959
Oil on masonite.
153 x 122.5 cm
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Inv. no.
456
(
1982.7
)
ROOM 50
Level 1
Permanent Collection
30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 Postpop rooms Rodin room
30 18th and 19th Centuries. Transatlantic Relations 31 19th Century. American Landscape and Environmental Awareness 32 19th Century. American Landscape and Urban Life 33 Recovering the ligth. Restoration of Waterloo Bridge, by André Derain 34 20th Century. Expressionist Landscapes 35 20th Century. Expressionist Portraits 36 20th Century. The Language of the Body 37 20th Century. Urban unrest 38 20th Century. Flowers 39 20th Century. Pioneers of abstraction 40 20th Century. Popular flavor 41 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition I 42 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition II 43 20th Century. Abstract Utopias 44 20th Century. Dada and Surrealism 45 20th Century. Interwar Realisms 46 20th Century. American Abstraction I 48 20th Century. Post-ward American Art 49 20th Century. Post-ward European Figurative Art 50 20th Century. Informalisms 51 20th Century. Homo Ludens 52 20th Century. Pop Art 53 Postpop rooms 54 Postpop rooms 55 Postpop rooms 56 Postpop rooms Rodin Exhibition room

The components of the School of London shared the same interest in the figurative content of painting, to which Frank Auerbach added a plastic language linked to material abstraction. He stated in a radio interview with Richard Cork, “I don’t disapprove of abstraction [as] all painting is abstraction.” As the critic David Sylvester remarked in 1955, the most obvious difference between the art of the second half of the century and that of the interwar period was “that rough surfaces have taken the place of smooth ones” and “the present age delights in texture and irregularity exploits the accidental, courts imperfection.” This transformation also reflected a shift in the whole approach to art: from the previous pursuit of order and depersonalisation to the yearning for freedom and singularity.

Executed in 1959, this gloomy image of The Shell Building Site, from the Thames, one of the two Auerbachs belonging to the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza collection, shows the deep depression dug out for the Shell company skyscraper, of which Auerbach made numerous sketches from life. The composition is a good example of his interest in transforming an everyday scene into a painting exclusively through form and colour — an almost monochromatic colour applied very hastily in heavy impasto. This manner of converting a motif that is so unusual, unattractive even, into the subject of a picture is Auerbach’s way of symbolising through painting man’s relationship with the materials with which he builds the world. For the artist, the very essence of painting thus lies in the creative process, in his struggle to define in art his internal assimilation of outward appearances. “While I’m painting, ” he declared, “I’ve had a thousand other sensations in the course of painting than the one I finally pin down. I don’t regard the painting as finished till it is locked geometrically for me in a way I had not foreseen.”

Paloma Alarcó

20th Centurys. XX - Figuración en la posguerra europeaPaintingOilmasonite
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The Shell Building Site, from the Thames. El edificio Shell en construcción, visto desde el Támesis, 1959
The Shell Building Site, from the Thames
Frank Auerbach

©

Frank Auerbach, courtesy de Marlborough Fine Art

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The Shell Building Site, from the Thames. El edificio Shell en construcción, visto desde el Támesis, 1959
The Shell Building Site, from the Thames
Frank Auerbach

©

Frank Auerbach, courtesy de Marlborough Fine Art

Terms of Use

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