2. Lucian Freud was born in Germany and was the grandson of
Sigmund Freud. Him and his family fled Germany during the rise of
Nazism, moving to England.
3. Freud spent most of his career in Paddington, London, an
inner-city area that greatly reflected Freud's often sombre and
melancholic works of art. In the start of his career, he was
principally interested in drawing
4. In 1943, the poet and editor Meary James Thurairajah
Tambimuttu, commissioned Freud to illustrate a book of poems called
The Glass Tower.
5. Freud's early paintings, are often associated with German
Expressionism, and surrealism because of his depiction of people,
plants and animals in unusual context. From the 1950s, he began to
work in portraiture, often nudes. By the middle of the decade he
developed a much more free style, using large brushes, with an
intense emphasis of the texture and color of flesh.
6. Freud's subjects, were often the people in his life;
friends, family, fellow painters, lovers, and children. He said,
"The subject matter is autobiographical, it's all to do with hope
and memory and sensuality and involvement.
7. Freud began a painting by first drawing in charcoal on the
canvas. He then applied paint to a small area of the canvas, and
gradually worked outward from that point. For new models, he would
start with the head as a means of "getting to know" the person,
then painted the rest of the figure, eventually returning to the
head as he gained more comprehension of the model.
8. Freud said, I paint people, not because of what they are
like, not exactly in spite of what they are like, but how they
happen to be. He has painted fellow artist Francis Bacon, and even
Kate Moss.
9. Freud is rumored to have fathered as many as forty children.
Fourteen children have been identified, two from Freud's first
marriage and 12 by various mistresses.