The famous British painter Frank Auerbach, born in Berlin as a Jewish German, is having his first exhibition in the city of his birth – half a year after his death at the age of 93.
Frank Auerbach finally has his first exhibition in Berlin. For an artist born in this city in 1931, one might call that rather late. For someone who died last November at the age of 93, still in the midst of undiminished creative energy, perhaps simply too late. But since Auerbach was just barely sent to safety in England by his parents in 1939—while they themselves remained in Nazi Germany and were ultimately murdered in Auschwitz—it is by no means a given that he would ever want to exhibit his paintings in his birth city again.
So, thanks are due not only to Galerie Michael Werner, which has now made this Berlin exhibition possible, but also to the late artist himself, who in the end warmed to the idea.
