Lucian Freud Works At New York Museum

Dramatic etchings by Lucian Freud will be juxtaposed with related paintings and drawings in Museum of Modern Art, New York from December 16, 2007 to March 10, 2008.

One of the foremost artists working today, Lucian Freud (British, b. Germany, 1922) has redefined portraiture and the nude through his frank scrutiny of the human form. Although best known as a painter, etching has become integral to Freud's practice. In an unusual cross-media installation, this exhibition explores the crucial relationship between Freud's etchings and his works on canvas.

Approximately 100 works are be featured, including some 70 etchings juxtaposed with 22 related paintings and 7 drawings, revealing the dramatic dialogue among mediums in Freud's oeuvre. The full scope and significance of Freud's achievements in etching are represented, ranging from rare, early experiments of the 1940s to the increasingly large and complex compositions created since his rediscovery of the medium in the early 1980s. Freud is not a traditional printmaker. He treats the etching plate like a canvas, standing the copper upright on an easel and working slowly over the course of several weeks or months to complete his image.

He typically depicts the same sitters in etching as in painting (mostly family members and friends), always working directly from his models but adjusting his vantage point slightly and using variously bunched, feathered, and hatched lines to bring their individual features into relief. Pared down to linear essentials and depicting figures cropped or isolated against empty backgrounds, Freud's etchings achieve a startling sense of psychological tension and formal abstraction.

Starr Figura has been Assistant Curator in the Department of Prints and Illustrated Books since 1996. She first joined the Department in 1993. Among the numerous exhibitions that Ms. Figura has organized for the Museum are The Compulsive Line: Etching 1900 to Now (2006); Masterworks of German Expressionism (2002); Giorgio Morandi Etchings (2000); Giacometti to Judd: Prints by Sculptors (1998); New Concepts in Printmaking 1: Peter Halley (1997); and Projects 53: Oliver Herring and Leonilson (1996). -- www.moma.org

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