Leon Kossoff

Marlborough Fine Art, Ltd., London
Private Collection, London (acquired in the 1960s)
Thence by descent to the present owner

London, Malborough Fine Art, Ltd., Leon Kossoff, 1968, no. 6

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is deeper and richer in the original, with more prominent orange and ochre tones throughout. Condition: This work is in very good condition. There are tiny losses to some of the impasto peaks, visible upon close inspection. There are few further losses and small breaks to some of the thicker areas of impasto, notably in the top left hand corner. There are a few short cracks in the lower right corner and in a few places elsewhere, visible only upon very close inspection. Examination under ultra-violet light reveals a spot that fluoresces in the lower right hand corner and another tiny spot towards the top edge in the upper right hand corner.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Head of Seedo portrays Leon Kossoff's great friend, the writer N. M. Seedo, who was one of the artist's first and most regular sitters from 1952 onwards. Dating from 1962, this extraordinary and powerful portrait was made shortly after Kossoff had moved to a new studio premises in Willesden Junction, and has remained in the same private collection since it was purchased from Marlborough Fine Art in the late 1960s. Previously unrecorded, it is the first time that this work has been seen in public in over forty years.

Painted with thick, near sculptural impasto into which the artist's heavy brushstrokes remain as dramatic and vibrant as the day they were channelled into the heavy paint layer, Head of Seedo illuminates the artist's psychological as well as physical exploration of his human sitters. Here Kossoff's virtuoso use of paint masterfully breaks the boundaries of figurative depiction to create a radical new form of 'realism' in which emotion and his relationship with the subject become the focal point in the present work. As Kossoff said when discussing this technique a couple of years previously, "I try to recreate the pictorial image. I struggle for truth... How hard it is to paint! I can spend years on a painting and months on a drawing... Nothing comes easily to me. I go on until the picture becomes a mutation, a miracle, something unexpected, even by me. Then it is finished." (Leon Kossoff cited in interview with N.G. Stone, in: 'The Artist & the Community', The Jewish Chronicle, 27 November 1959).