The SCHOOL of LONDON

aka

The Colony Room School

". . . So many frequented The Colony Room that a self-contained movement, "The Colony Room School" arose. Essentially a subject of R.R. Kitaj's "School of London," its nucleus comprised a group of friends and contemporaries: Francis Bacon, Frank Auebach, Lucian Freud, Michael Andrews. The latter's painting, The Colony Room I, 1962 sets at least two of them in their milieu (all 23' x 12' of it): Freud stands off-center facing out, and Bacon sits to his left with Muriel Belcher on her stool dividing them. . . ."

John Deakin: Photographs
selected & essay by Robin Muir
The Vendome Press, New York, 1996

Ron B. Kitaj first refered to the School of London in his catalogue introduction to the exhibition titled " the Human Clay" at the Hayward Gallery in 1976. Kitaj noted that while abstraction, happenings and transformations were triumphant there was a special trend towards figurative painting as well as a kind of obsession for the human figure among most London painters."

"Each of these painters 'instilled a personal style in their works dissecting reality and the morphological attitude of models, expressionist and violent for Auerbach, haloed with dream and mystery for Andrews, coloured and graphic for Kitaj while Kossof seems much attracted by thick materials. Francis Bacon . . . was much concerned by human condition using derision to depict human figures always shown distorted so as to express anguish and solitude. Contrary to Bacon's nudity of the soul, Lucian Freud seems fascinated by the nudity of bodies and proves to be a master in expressing sheer intimacy with no restrictions.'"