Lucian Freud is one of the most recognizable names of the 20th-century British art scene. The remarkable thing about his career as a painter, which spanned over nearly seven decades, is the consistency of his style. His expressionist portraits and figure paintings remained unmistakably unique right up to the end when he passed away at age 88.
Lucian Freud was born in Berlin in 1922 to architect Ernst Freud and was the grandson of the psychologist Sigmund Freud. At age 11, in 1933, Freud emigrated with his family to London, Britain, to escape the rise of Nazism.
Freud’s mature style started developing when he was a tutor at the Slade School of Art from 1949 to 1954. In fact, it is in the 1950s when Freud began to exclusively focus on portraits and nudes.
Freud did not shy away from using his own body as a model for many self-portraits and nude paintings. It is curious then why, in 1997, he so vehemently denied the ownership of a nude self-portrait.
Freud is one of the few artists that enjoyed great success while they were living. In 2008, one of his paintings of Sue Tilley, titled Benefits Supervisor Sleeping (1995), sold for $33.6 million.
Lucian Freud changed the way we look at portraiture. His confrontational and unapologetic style of celebrating the rawness of the human figure has carved his name solidly in the art history books.