The Centre Pompidou in Paris exhibits the work of Lucian Freud, one of the most important living artists in the world. This exhibition presents an exceptional overview of his masterpieces and pays an unprecedented tribute to one of the greatest contemporary painters. Composed of around fifty large-sized paintings, accompanied by a selection of graphic works and photographs. The exhibition brings together the painter’s main full-size compositions, known as Large Interiors, as well as his variations on former masters, his series of self-portraits and the recent and imposing portraits of Leigh Bowery or Big Sue, the painter’s masterpieces. The uniqueness of Lucian Freud’s work lies in his meticulous and almost obsessional treatment of the portrait and the nude, based on an absolute approach to the art of painting. “I want the painting to be flesh (…)”. The model is observed in the closed world of the studio, the painter’s laboratory. The theme of the artist’s studio bears the metaphor of painting: the one-to-one between the painter and his model (from Rembrandt, to Courbet and Picasso), the space of painting – representation of the real, the process of creation -, the figure of the artist – self-portraits and rereading the masters.
