Leon Kossoff Contemporary English artist - expressionist. Date of Birth: 07.12.1926 Country: Great Britain

Leon Kossoff: Biography

Leon Kossoff is a contemporary English artist known for his expressive style of painting. He was born into a family of Jewish immigrants from Russia. In 1938, he enrolled in the Dagenham Down School. During World War II, Kossoff participated in military actions across Europe, including France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany.

Between 1949 and 1953, Kossoff studied at the Central School of Art and Design at St. Martin's, and later under the guidance of David Bomberg at the South Bank University in London. He also spent three years at the Royal College of Art. In addition to his practice as a painter, Kossoff taught at the Chelsea School of Art from 1959 to 1964 and at the St. Martin's School of Art and Design from 1966 to 1969.

In 1972, Kossoff held his most comprehensive solo exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery. This was followed by a panorama of his paintings from the 1970s at the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford in 1981. Kossoff, skilled in various drawing techniques and composition, prefers figurative painting, often depicting objects in fantastical relationships. Alongside his colleagues Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, and Frank Auerbach, Leon Kossoff is recognized by art critics as part of the London School, a post-war movement among English painters and sculptors dedicated not only to abstract art but also to the traditional, figurative artistic form.