Frank Auerbach - To The Studio 1979-1980

Frank Auerbach (1931 – 2024)
To The Studio 1979-1980
Original Mixed Media on Paper
Signed on the verso
20 x 29 cm
The phrase “To the Studio” refers to the daily sketches Auerbach produced
while walking through London, especially from his home to his longoccupied
Camden Town studio. Although he sketched throughout his
career, this practice evolved into a sustained, quasi-ritualistic activity that
directly informed his cityscape paintings.
These sketches generally depict Mornington Crescent, Camden High Street,
Primrose Hill, and Euston Road. They are executed in graphite, charcoal,
ink, or felt pen and record transient visual events of London: buses, cranes,
billboards, demolition sites, bridges, traffic, and seasonal atmosphere.
Auerbach’s Intent & Method
Seeing as an Action
Auerbach’s drawings are not passive observations.
They record the act of looking itself, fast, energetic strokes mimic head
movements and shifts in viewpoint.
Lines overlap and contradict each other, capturing temporality rather than
stable outlines.

From Sketch to Painting
The drawings served not as preliminary “plans,” but as sensory triggers:
They provided structural scaffolding for the final paintings.
Auerbach did not copy the sketches; rather, he drew them into his memory,
then reconstructed London anew in studio-based works.
The sketches preserve freshness that counterbalances the slow, laborious
method of his heavy-impasto paintings.
Relationship to Place
The London he depicts is in perpetual transformation — construction,
rebuilding, demolition.
It is central to his identity as an artist displaced from Europe during WWII.
A lived environment, not a scenic subject — hence the immediacy and
physicality of his marks.
1965–1980 | Consolidation & Complexity
Daily London walks become formalized in his schedule.
The urban reconstruction boom (post-war rebuilding) gives him constant
subject matter: excavations, cranes, new tube entrances, and roadworks.
Drawings show increasing structural clarity alongside intense kinetic
energy.
This is a peak period for his “memory-mapping” of the city.
1980s | Recognition & Refinement
Auerbach emerges as a major British painter.
Drawing becomes more lyrical, with subtle tonal gradations.
Some of the most iconic “To the Studio” sketches date from this period—
clear enough to identify sites, yet wild enough to feel like storms of
perception.