Portrait of Chaim II
A thickly impastoed portrait rendered in Kossoff's characteristically raw and visceral style, with dense layers of oil paint building the sitter's face into a heavily textured, almost sculptural surface. The muted, earthy tones are punctuated by expressive, urgent brushwork that conveys both the weight of human presence and the intimacy of a long-observed relationship between artist and subject. Kossoff's deeply personal approach transforms portraiture into an act of sustained, searching attention.
- Medium
- oil on board
- Location
- Phillips, Salt Lake City, UT
- Spotted At
- Auction House · PhillipsView on map
🔨 Auction Lot
20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale
June 27, 2016
Artists in conversation
Frank Auerbach
British · b. 1931
Auerbach is perhaps the closest parallel to Kossoff, working in the same London School tradition with extreme impasto buildup across repeated portraits of intimate subjects, creating similarly sculptural surfaces dense with accumulated paint layers and psychological intensity.
Chaim Soutine
Lithuanian-French · b. 1893
Soutine shares the visceral, urgently worked surface quality and raw expressionist brushwork seen in this portrait, applying thick oil paint with feverish energy to figurative subjects while maintaining a similarly brooding, earthen palette suffused with psychological weight.
Lucian Freud
British · b. 1922
Freud also pursued sustained, deeply observational portraiture over extended sittings, building up heavily worked paint surfaces in muted tones that transform the human face into an object of intense psychological scrutiny, sharing Kossoff's commitment to portraiture as an act of prolonged searching attention.
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