“When I met Lucian he was 69, and I could see – one of the things which was really noticeable – this man was really going to go for it. This was his final big push, and boy was he going to nail it this time.” —David Dawson
The large-scale nude portraits by Lucian Freud (b. 1922, Berlin; d. 2011, London), painted later in the artist’s life, are a career-defining body of work for an artist full of such moments. David Dawson, Lucian Freud’s long-serving studio assistant and friend, recently curated an exhibition at Acquavella Galleries entitled Lucian Freud: Monumental, a loan exhibition focusing on these works. In case you missed the show, our friends at Bower Blue produced this video for Acquavella with Dawson – who is also director of the Lucian Freud Archive – talking about the show, and about the epic time and energy Freud spent creating them.