Leon Kossoff

Leon Kossoff is one of the most important British artists of the post-war period. Among the main preoccupations of his art has been the changing face of London's urban landscape: his earliest subjects documented London's passage from wartime destruction to regeneration. The range of Kossoff's subjects has since extended to swimming pools, railways and street scenes in paintings which evoke everyday urban existence. Kossoff's other main concern has been the human figure, and his portraits and studies are intense, yet also intimate, evocations of human presence. In 1996, the Tate Gallery will be mounting a retrospective exhibition of Kossoff's work, including more than 80 paintings from all phases of his career. The catalogue contains colour reproductions of all these works and also features an essay by Paul Moorhouse, the selector of the exhibition. This essay examines Kossoff's art in depth, exploring the artist's fascination with particular subjects, his working methods and tracing his development from the 1950s to the present day. The essay is accompanied by archival photographs.