Frank Auerbach: A Life Painted in Thick Emotion Born in Berlin in 1931, Frank Auerbach’s journey to becoming one of the most distinctive figures in post-war British painting was profoundly shaped by a childhood disrupted by rising fascism. His father, a lawyer, and his mother, a former art student, instilled in him an early appreciation for visual culture, but the looming threat of Nazi Germany forced their relocation to England in 1939. This experience – the loss of family, the displacement, and the subsequent years spent at a progressive boarding school in Kent – became a foundational elem…