Lucian Freud (1922 - 2011)
Human Radio
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Ink on paper
22 x 15 cm (8 ⁵/₈ x 5 ⁷/₈ inches)
Executed in 1940
Drawing on the reverse
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Provenance
The artist
Matthew Marks Gallery, USA
Private collection, acquired from the above -
Exhibitions
New York, Matthew Marks Gallery, Lucian Freud: Drawings 1940, February - April 2003
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Literature
Smee, Sebastian, Lucian Freud: Drawings 1940, New York, Matthew Marks Gallery, 2003, pls. 25 (recto) 27 (verso) (illustrated in colour)
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Description
This work is amongst Freud’s most powerful early drawings, an existential cry, carrying with it the intensity of Edvard Munch’s The Scream and fascinatingly anticipating Francis Bacon’s later Screaming Popes. It belongs to a series of drawings executed in coloured inks in which the young Freud first exerts his distinct artistic personality. William Feaver vividly described their inspired creation: "Bottles of ink, red, green, blue, black, cluttered the parlour table as Freud filled the pages with whatever occurred to him, one notion sparking another. (Quoting Freud) “The drawings are very high-spirited, a private language” “ (W. Feaver, The Lives of Lucian Freud, Youth, London, 2019, p. 94)