The School of London was a loose confederation of painters comprised of Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, and R.B. Kitaj. The group was more of a social clique than a movement, with each of the three painters tangentially associated with different schools;... [more]

The School of London was a loose confederation of painters comprised of Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, and R.B. Kitaj. The group was more of a social clique than a movement, with each of the three painters tangentially associated with different schools; the only solid link among them was their interest in figurative painting. Kitaj began his career as an ambivalent British Pop artist. Rather than playfully fill his canvases with appropriated commercial symbols, he collaged historical characters and allusions into cryptic, colorful, Action-influenced paintings. Paintings such as Rosa Luxemburg's "Assassins", "Isaak Babel Riding with Budjonny", and "Austro-Hungarian Foot Soldier" abound with covert cultural references that inspire flights of mental associations, pointing to its derivation from Abstract Expressionism. However, Kitaj's cohorts were more interested in rendering the anatomy and physiognomy of the human figure without cultural and historical contexts. Bacon's complex brand of Realism distorts figures to reveal the essence of their characters with a painterly virtuosity. The subjects of his paintings - which include himself and his close friends - stand dispassionately while Bacon's expansive brush captures their auras of existential angst in visceral color and threatening form. Like Bacon, Lucian Freud embraced expressive painting techniques and figurative forms, but relied more on an existential blankness to reveal his subjects. [show less]