In 1939 his parents organised the escape of seven-year-old Frank Auerbach from Berlin to England; they themselves fell victim to the Holocaust. From 1948 on Auerbach studied art in London, his most important teacher being David Bromberg. In 1956 he succeeded at the Beaux Arts Gallery in London. Today Auerbach, along with his friends Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon and Leon Kossoff, is one of the most important painters of post-war figurative art in England.
