Max Levai, former president of quickly closing Marlborough Gallery, brings Frank Auerbach exhibition to Venice

The US supplier Max Levai is bringing a bunch of 12 work by the nonagenarian German-British painter Frank Auerbach to Venice later this month. Auberbach final exhibited within the Italian port metropolis in 1986 when he was awarded the Golden Lion for his presentation within the British Pavilion.

It’s the first exhibition exterior of the US staged by Levai, who has been working an artwork house in Montauk, Lengthy Island since he was ousted as president of Marlborough Gallery in June 2020. The agency introduced final week will probably be closing its areas in New York, London, Madrid and Barcelona in June after almost 80 years in enterprise. The timing of the Venice present is “an entire coincidence”, says Levai, including that he has had “no involvement” with Marlborough since he left. 

Auerbach was previously represented by Marlborough Gallery, although The Artwork Newspaper understands he left across the similar time as quite a lot of administrators who resigned in Might 2022 and is now represented by Frankie Rossi Artwork Initiatives in London. An Auerbach present had been slated to open at Marlborough in New York in Might 2020 however by no means got here to fruition. 

Titled Frank Auerbach: Beginning Once more, after an interview with the artist broadcast on Radio 4 in January, the Venice exhibition might be put in within the still-inhabited Fifteenth-century Palazzo da Mosto, designed by the identical architect of the Rialto Bridge.

Spanning 5 many years of the artist’s profession, from 1969 to 2016, the works have been sourced from non-public collections, in accordance with Levai. “Every of the work present how Auerbach repeatedly pushed boundaries, how he reinvented himself throughout the constraints of the canvas,” the supplier provides. A lot of Auberbach’s frequent sitters are featured—together with his spouse Julia and the businessman David Landau—as are scenes of Mornington Crescent in north London, the place the artist has had a studio since 1954.

Levai declined to say whether or not the works are on the market, noting that the impetus for the present is to open a dialogue about Auerbach exterior of his associations with the Faculty of London. Although he was pals with Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud and others within the loosely grouped college, Auerbach maintained a definite independence. Nonetheless, Levai has one eye on Artwork Basel, which opens two weeks earlier than the Venice present closes on 28 June. “Plenty of People aren’t travelling to Venice for the opening [of the biennial] however might be in Europe later. We’re anticipating a world viewers in June,” the supplier says.

As for Auerbach’s market, Levai notes how the very early works “are typically favoured, however my place is that he actually got here into his personal as a painter on the break of the Nineteen Seventies”. He provides: “One might argue that his finest work had been made within the 2000s.”