Lucian Freud, the man who has done more to renew the reputation of figure painting than any other, is dead at 88. Known for his fleshy figures and subtle surrealism, the artist’s career exploded from what William Grimes in today’s NY Times called “deeply unfashionable” to superstar almost overnight when the eighties po-mo shakeup gave his work, suspiciously tied to the romantic tradition of European figurative art, a foot in the door.
