Marlborough Fine Art, London
Acquavella Galleries, New York
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

William Feaver, Frank Auerbach, New York 2009, no. 923, p. 345, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is slightly brighter and more vibrant in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultra-violet light.
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London’s urban landscape has remained a recurring subject in Auerbach’s oeuvre. He stated, “I feel London is this raw thing…This extraordinary, marvelously unpainted city where wherever somebody tries to get something going they stop halfway through, and next to it something incongruous occurs…this higgledy piggledy mess of a city” (artist cited in Exhibition Catalogue London, Royal Academy of Art, Frank Auerbach: Paintings and Drawings 1954-2000, 2001, p.100) It is exactly this vibrant energy and immediacy that is captured in the thickness of paint and the impulsive brushstrokes of Park Village East.

Auerbach’s fascination with urban landscape is essentially that of North London. Stretching from Camden Town where his studio is located, up to Mornington Crescent and the little villas on Park Village East, it is a corner of London that Auerbach has sought to capture for almost forty years. Without any intention of being a serial👍 painter, Auerbach has repeatedly painted the same view, observing it at different seasons and in different weather conditions. He explains, “This part of London is my world. I’ve been wandering around these streets for so long that I have become attached to them, and as fond of them as people are for their pets.” (The artist interviewed by Michael Peppiat in Tate, issue no. 14, Spring 1998).

Returning almost obsessively to this specific place, Auerbach has made this part of London his own world. There is an extraordinary intimacy reflected in this wonderfully rich example whereby the artist invites the viewer to see the city through his personal perspective. Maintaining an absolute consistency of qualitative intensity in each of his works, Auerbach has developed his own unique language and through Park Village East, has immortalised a city.