The National Portrait Gallery in London presents a first-ever exhibition in the UK exploring the creative relationship between drawing, printmaking, and painting by one of the greatest portraitists of the 20th century, Lucian Freud. Born in Berlin in 1922 to Jewish parents and raised in England, Lucian Freud is renowned for his intense and unmistakably realistic portraits. His career, spanning over sixty years, is characterized by dense brushstrokes and thick impasto, with a strong psychological focus on models portrayed in prolonged, intimate poses. Freud often worked directly from life and devoted extremely long exposure times to his portraits, sometimes lasting months, to capture the truth of the subject. This exhibition marks a first for the museum: it is the first in the UK to focus on Freud's drawing, incorporating techniques such as pencil, pen, ink, charcoal, and etching. The selection - also the result of twelve new acquisitions from the artist's archive, including eight previously unpublished engravings - compares preparatory drawings and paintings, highlighting the dialogue between paper and canvas throughout his creative practice. The exhibition emphasizes the centrality of drawing in the process preceding painting, revealing how Freud constructed the subject's face and body precisely through this preliminary practice. In this sense, drawing and painting are not separate but integral parts of a single visual language, rich in immediacy and introspection.
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