Lucian Freud
Lucian Freud
Lucian Michael Freud OM CH was a British painter. Known chiefly for his thickly impastoed portrait and figure paintings, he was widely considered the pre-eminent British artist of his time. His works are noted for their psychological penetration and their often discomforting examination of the relationship between artist and model...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionPainter
Date of Birth8 December 1922
CityBerlin, Germany
Lucian Freud quotes about
portraits
Everything is autobiographical and everything is a portrait.
way concentration observation
The only way I could work properly was by using the absolute maximum of observation and concentration that I could possible muster.
art character thinking
The character of the artist doesn't enter into the nature of the art. Eliot said that art is the escape from personality, which I think is right. We know that Velázquez embezzled money from the Spanish court and wanted power and so on, but you can't see this in his art.
people paint spite
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.
art giving trying
I remember Francis Bacon would say that he felt he was giving art what he thought it previously lacked. With me, it's what Yeats called the fascination with what's difficult. I'm only trying to do what I can't do.
painting seducing convince
What do I ask of a painting? I ask it to astonish, disturb, seduce, convince.
emotional want significance
Full, saturated colours have an emotional significance I want to avoid.
morning giving-up ambitious
It is the only point of getting up every morning: to paint, to make something good, to make something even better than before, not to give up, to compete, to be ambitious.
motivational art real
The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real.
air smell space
The aura given out by a person or object is as much a part of them as their flesh. The effect that they make in space is as bound up with them as might be their colour or smell ... Therefore the painter must be as concerned with the air surrounding his subject as with the subject itself. It is through observation and perception of atmosphere that he can register the feeling that he wishes his painting to give out.
ducks skins recipes
Painting is sometimes like those recipes where you do all manner of elaborate things to a duck, and then end up putting it on one side and only using the skin.
real views feelings
The painter makes real to others his innermost feelings about all that he cares for. A secret becomes known to everyone who views the picture through the intensity with which it is felt.