Lucian Freud

<p class=ql-align-center><strong> R</strong>enowned artist <strong>Lucian Freud </strong>(1922-2011) is commemorated in an    exhibition of portraits and figure studies spanning seven decades his working life held at the National Portrait Gallery London from   February to May 2012. </p><p class=ql-align-justify> The monograph explores the development of his art from acutely    observed studies of the 1940s to major paintings in the later phase where the artist engaged in a complex and sometimes brutal meditation on the human being drawn from an intimate engagement with the sitter. </p><p class=ql-align-justify> Freud's unsparing eye maps his subjects sustaining single handed an almost unique commitmnt to the ambitions of high art grounded in          classical canons of Western tradition. The study includes a review by   Marina Vaizey of Freud's drawings prints and oil studies exhibited at Blain|Southern Gallery Hay Hill.</p><p class=ql-align-justify><br></p><p class=ql-align-justify><strong>Marina Vaizey </strong>is an art critic lecturer and traveller; her books include <em>The Artist as Photographer</em> <em>100 Masterpieces of Art; Great Women Collectors. </em>She was the art critic for the Financial Times for four years and The Sunday Times for eighteen. She has curated several exhibitions and written manycatalogues. She has been a Trustee for several  national museums.</p><p> </p>