.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
拍品专文
Willesden Junction is an energetic and richly worked urban landscape which epitomises Kossoff’s fascination and preoccupation with his beloved city of London. Willesden station represents a key theme in Kossoff’s oeuvre, and one he regularly revisited over the course of his career, having initially painted the busy rail site in 1961. The present work is one of the most dynamic renderings of the subject, depicted with rich movement and vivid mastery of medium.
Born in East London, where his father, a Ukrainian Jewish immigrant, had a bakery, Kossoff returned to London after being evacuated to King’s Lynn during the Second World War, to study at St Martin’s School of Art and subsequently at the Royal College of Art. On his return, inspired by the teachings of David Bomberg during a series of evening classes, he immersed himself in the gritty reality of London’s fractured landscape.
Along with his friend and fellow student Frank Auerbach, Kossoff scoured the city’s streets for suitable subjects, seeking to reveal what Bomberg described as ‘the spirit in the mass’ (D. Bomberg, quoted in R. Hughes, Leon Kossoff, London, 1995, p. 12). Championing physical intuition over studied precision, Kossoff captured the living essence of his London haunts: Mornington Crescent; Christ Church Spitalfields; the disused railway lands behind King’s Cross; St Paul’s, Kilburn; Willesden and his beloved Dalston Junction. For over six decades, Kossoff rigorously chronicled many of the physical and social changes which took place across the city, capturing street scenes, markets and stations, rendering his landscapes with highly expressive thickly layered impasto, and his drawings, such as the present work, with rapid, heavily worked surfaces.
Returning to the same subjects through the changing seasons, the artist would obsessively revisit his pictures, excavating and rebuilding them like archaeological fragments. For Kossoff, drawing was essential, an obsessional and indispensable aspect of his practice. He always began his works, whether landscapes or portraits, with an exploration of the subject through drawing from life, which for him was the only method of truly conveying what he saw, felt and perceived.
After working onsite on numerous drawings, he amalgamated his studies into larger charcoal renderings back in his studio just around the corner. Works on canvas soon followed and were executed quickly after visits to the site, ensuring the canvas was imbued with the sensations he experienced there. Willesden Junction became a classic motif, defining his urban landscapes. Unlike his depictions of King’s Cross and Dalston Junction, there is a direct dynamism in Willesden; the composition is balanced, less cluttered and immediately identifiable. This is evident in the present work with the train tracks dramatically surging forwards towards the viewer, confronting them directly with Kossoff’s urban scene. The network of tracks and railways bridges, with the high-rise towers punctuating the skyline, serving to enhance the sense of drama and the business of his urban environs.
Born in East London, where his father, a Ukrainian Jewish immigrant, had a bakery, Kossoff returned to London after being evacuated to King’s Lynn during the Second World War, to study at St Martin’s School of Art and subsequently at the Royal College of Art. On his return, inspired by the teachings of David Bomberg during a series of evening classes, he immersed himself in the gritty reality of London’s fractured landscape.
Along with his friend and fellow student Frank Auerbach, Kossoff scoured the city’s streets for suitable subjects, seeking to reveal what Bomberg described as ‘the spirit in the mass’ (D. Bomberg, quoted in R. Hughes, Leon Kossoff, London, 1995, p. 12). Championing physical intuition over studied precision, Kossoff captured the living essence of his London haunts: Mornington Crescent; Christ Church Spitalfields; the disused railway lands behind King’s Cross; St Paul’s, Kilburn; Willesden and his beloved Dalston Junction. For over six decades, Kossoff rigorously chronicled many of the physical and social changes which took place across the city, capturing street scenes, markets and stations, rendering his landscapes with highly expressive thickly layered impasto, and his drawings, such as the present work, with rapid, heavily worked surfaces.
Returning to the same subjects through the changing seasons, the artist would obsessively revisit his pictures, excavating and rebuilding them like archaeological fragments. For Kossoff, drawing was essential, an obsessional and indispensable aspect of his practice. He always began his works, whether landscapes or portraits, with an exploration of the subject through drawing from life, which for him was the only method of truly conveying what he saw, felt and perceived.
After working onsite on numerous drawings, he amalgamated his studies into larger charcoal renderings back in his studio just around the corner. Works on canvas soon followed and were executed quickly after visits to the site, ensuring the canvas was imbued with the sensations he experienced there. Willesden Junction became a classic motif, defining his urban landscapes. Unlike his depictions of King’s Cross and Dalston Junction, there is a direct dynamism in Willesden; the composition is balanced, less cluttered and immediately identifiable. This is evident in the present work with the train tracks dramatically surging forwards towards the viewer, confronting them directly with Kossoff’s urban scene. The network of tracks and railways bridges, with the high-rise towers punctuating the skyline, serving to enhance the sense of drama and the business of his urban environs.