The Impressed Image
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Arnold Auerbach (Liverpool 1898 - 1978 London)
Born in Liverpool, April 2, 1898, Auerbach was the son of tradesman whose grandfather had emigrated from Poland. As a boy he attended evening art classes at the Liverpool Institute, before taking up full-time study at the Liverpool School of Art.
Invalided out of the army in 1918 he worked for an architect carrying out the interior designs of new buildings with both relief sculpture and mural decoration. His initial interest was sculpture, exhibiting in Liverpool. In 1921 Auerbach moved to London where he shared a studio with the painter Robert Arthur Wilson and exhibited sculpture and drawings at the Chenil Gallery and Royal Academy. He settled in a studio in Hampstead and during the Second World War took a teaching post at Beckenham Art School, then Regent Street Polytechnic, where he taught architectural design, still life and portrait painting. Subsequently he was at Chelsea School of Art, until his retirement in 1964. Afterwards he continued to teach at the Stanhope Institute until 1968. Ill health had forced Auerbach to give up making sculpture in the mid-1950's and concentrate on the physically less demanding medium of painting thereafter.
He etched intermittently from the 1920's to 1960, in a variety of styles, initially traditional, then cubist in nature and latterly still life of and portraiture of a modernist nature.
An interesting, if little known, artist of the Modern British School, Elizabeth Harvey-Lee held a centenary exhibition of his work in 1998, showing a fair selection of his 100 or so etchings plus the plates. The plates virtually sold out in 48 hours, much to her amazement!
This is a typical etching based on a 1948 painting.
The Mendicant II
Etching 1959. Edition size Unknown.
Pattern Proof with printing details
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