English painter and draughtsman. As a child he lived in the East End of London, where his Russian Jewish immigrant parents ran a bakery. He studied in London at St Martin’s School of Art (1949–53) and at the Royal College of Art (1953–6), also taking evening classes at the Borough Polytechnic under David Bomberg (1950–52). Like fellow student Frank Auerbach, he evolved a method of painting that entailed the heavy reworking of thick impasto to try to provide a truthful rendering of people and places he knew well. Drawing is given primacy as an expression of his commitment and involvement with the subject, and painting itself is conceived as a form of drawing.
Kossoff remained remarkably consistent in his methods and in his range of subject-matter, although he gradually moved away from the earth colours and thick encrusted surfaces displayed in paintings such as Man in a Wheelchair (1959–62; London, Tate) towards a more sparing use of paint and a wider range of brighter colours. His figure paintings are often of close friends and family members; he commemorated his parents, for example, in Two Seated Figures No. 2 (1980; London, Tate), and his pictures of nudes are often of his wife, Rosalind, or of his long-standing model Fidelma. Autobiographical content is also foremost in his pictures of London, which are generally of areas where he lived—from the East End and City to Willesden and Kilburn—peopled by family and friends identifiable in many cases from studio portraits. His favoured urban subjects include railway bridges and sidings, churches and other imposing local buildings and building sites, as in Demolition of the Old House, Dalston Junction, Summer 1974 (1974; London, Tate). Kossoff returned to favoured motifs, such as the children’s swimming pool in Willesden (e.g. Children’s Swimming Pool, Autumn Afternoon, 1971; London, Tate) and the booking hall at Kilburn underground station (from the mid-1970s), exploring changes not just in light but in emotion. He is sometimes classed as an Expressionist, although his references to the work of Old Masters such as Titian, Rembrandt and Rubens reveal him as a figurative painter with a strong sense of tradition.
James Hyman
From Grove Art Online
© 2009 Oxford University Press