Leon Kossoff: Drawing from Painting

by Colin Wiggins, Juliet Wilson-Bareau, Philip Conisbee

Known for his expressive portraits and London landscapes, draftsman, printmaker, and painter Leon Kossoff (b. 1926) is one of the most significant British artists of the past fifty years. A member of the School of London––a group of loosely representational painters including Frank Auerbach, Francis Bacon, and Lucian Freud––Kossoff views drawing as fundamental to the artistic process and has turned to art history for inspiration throughout his career.
This handsome book features a selection of drawings and prints made over thirty years after paintings by such artists as Poussin, Rubens, Velázquez, Degas, Cézanne, and Goya. Absorbing essays discuss how Kossoff has used this body of drawings to inform his original paintings and analyze how the particular influence of Old Masters has been incorporated into his work.

112 pages, Paperback

First published May 28, 2007

About the author

Colin Wiggins was Special Projects Curator at the National Gallery until 2016. Before taking up this post in 2011 he worked in the Gallery’s Education Department where he had special responsibility for the Associate Artist scheme, working with artists such as Paula Rego, Peter Blake, Ana Maria Pacheco and Michael Landy. He has also curated exhibitions at the National Gallery of, amongst others, Frank Auerbach, Anthony Caro, R.B. Kitaj, Edward Kienholz, Nancy Reddin Kienholz and Bridget Riley. He has lectured widely in the United States and Europe and is a practising printmaker, with work in various collections including the Los Angeles County Museum and the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.