Leon Kossoff: Vigorously Drawing London's Urban Landscape
Painting the city with physicality, exhilaration and angst
Leon Kossoff (1926-2018) was a pivotal figure in 20th-century British art celebrated for his emotive paintings and drawings reflecting the hustle and bustle of urban life in London and capturing the city’s landscapes, buildings, and people.
Kossoff’s portrayals of churches, railway junctions, underground stations, swimming pools, and gardens are vibrant and lyrical. These on-scene drawings were the basis for his impasto, often somber paintings. He wanted to tell the story of the change, loss, survival, and renewal that he saw happening in postwar Britain.
“Every day I think, ‘Today I might teach myself to draw. If you love a picture, you can learn how to draw from it.”- Leon Kossoff
In the drawing View of King’s Cross and Pentonville Station 1 (top) a tide of commuters spill from the mouth of the station against the grand façade of its edifice and ominous skies. Kossoff drew this frenetic crowd scene by making marks that are a tangle of lines in a dynamic spiral composition.
Kossoff’s drawings have a manic energy. His process was one of relentless exploration, often reworking the surface. He wrestled with a drawing until it was battered into submission and the paper scarred. He made these revisions to the image till he felt ready to paint it, and even then, he frequently scraped back the oil paint multiple times to achieve the result he wanted.
A passionate observer of London’s ever-evolving landscape, Leon Kossoff captured its extraordinary vibrancy through a dynamic and energetic application of charcoal and paint. His art transcends mere representation, offering a visceral experience that compels audiences to delve into not only the subject matter but the rich physicality and thought-provoking existential themes that underpin his creations.
all artworks © Leon Kossoff
More to Know:
Leon Kossoff’s obituary in the New York Times
A show of London Landscapes by Leon Kossoff at Mitchell-Innes & Nash
Toby Glanville writes in the London Review of Books about photographing Leon Kossoff.
Pretty amazing pictures. At first it's like a jumble of things. You have to look again to figure it all out. Pretty frenetic and dark too.💖🌹
The pool sketch and painting side by side are so different! The things that work for me in the sketch are not present in the painting, and then vice versa. There is something airy about the pool sketch that instead reads humid and stifling in the pool painting, yet the figures are at peace and joyful. The juxtaposition of joy in the figures while confined together certainly does feel like an important postwar theme in the UK, just like these images of the underground stations. Thanks Bill, always so interested in your posts!