This volume, with more than 400 reproductions, will be the most comprehensive publication to date on Lucian Freud, covering a span of seventy years and including many works not previously reproduced. The result is a corpus of great works that reveal him to be the premier heir today of Rembrandt, Courbet, and Cézanne. The book includes not only Freud’s paintings but also his sketches, woodcuts, and powerful etchings. While the bulk of his paintings are female nudes, his cityscapes, plant studies, and interiors, executed in his distinctive muted palette and visible brushwork, are all included. Freud, who has lived in London ever since his family left Berlin in 1933 when he was ten, has achieved preeminence through his ruthless perception of the human form. His importance has long been recognized in England, but his present super-celebrity status dates from a retrospective at the Hirshhorn in Washington, D.C., in 1987. William Feaver, painter and for many years art critic for The Observer, provides a unique account of Freud’s preoccupations and achievement. Startling, moving, profoundly entertaining, the book lives up to Freud’s advice to students when getting them to paint self-portraits: “To try and make it the most revealing, telling, and believable object. Something really shameless, you know.”
"7/10 - La factura del libro es impecable, viene con una caja de protección muy sofisticada. Pero no es una edición perfecta: un 10% de las imágenes tienen baja calidad de impresión y algunas no son muy fieles a los colores de los originales, lo cual es lamentable para una publicación tan seria. Tampoco es un catalogue raisonné, faltan algunas pinturas. En general es un buen libro, de buena extensión y buenos textos (incluye algunas entrevistas), pero he visto mejores reproducciones de la obra de Freud en otras publicaciones. A un buen precio promocional vale la pena su adquisición."