Biography

Leon Kossoff was a British painter best known for his Expressionist portraits, landscapes of London, and intimate views of his yard. Along with other members of the School of London like R.B. Kitaj, Frank Auerbach, Lucian Freud, and Francis Bacon, Kossoff reinvigorated figurative painting during the mid-1970s. His distinctive style is recognizable by its very thick impasto paint, expressive brushwork, and sophisticated use of color, lending his works a manic energy tempered by a subtle and emotionally intimate palette. Of his portraits, he has explained his labored process that take many sittings to complete: “The subject is visited many times and lots of drawings are made, mostly very quickly,” Kossoff has said. “The work is begun in the studio where each new drawing means a new start until, one day, a drawing appears which opens up the subject in a new way.” Born on December 7, 1926 in London, United Kingdom to Russian-Jewish parents, Kossoff studied at Saint Martin’s School of Art before serving in the 2nd Battalion Jewish Brigade of the Royal Fusiliers. Today, the artist’s works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Cleveland Museum of Art among others. Kossoff died at the age of 92 on July 4, 2019.