BIRMINGHAM, UK.- The Waterhall Gallery of Modern Art, Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, presents Lucian Freud Etchings 1946-2004, on view through May 2, 2005. Lucian Freud (born 1922) is internationally celebrated as a painter of the human figure. His graphic work is comparable in achievement though less well known. Using the medium of etching, his prints have an immediacy that takes us straight to the core of his concerns as an artist. He reveals the naked truth of his subjects without the trappings of style and convention.

We find the same sitters as in his paintings, but there is little sense of repetition. Each work is observed from scratch, although the experience of making an etching often feeds back into a painting of the same person and vice versa.

The avoidance of formula is also evident in landscapes and animal subjects, contributing to a sense of awkwardness and unease that makes Freud’s work so vivid: “in so far as my work has a function, I want it to disturb people so that it remains in their heads”.

This exhibition contains nearly all of Freud’s etchings, which were made in two distinct periods. The rare early masterpieces from the 1940’s are small in scale with a tightly controlled, almost miniaturist, graphic language.

The later group, made since Freud took up etching again in 1982, shows the artist developing an increasingly confident and expansive approach, often in large-scale works that are as powerful and demanding as his paintings.

Freud’s very latest etchings are also displayed here for the first time, alongside a small number of comparative paintings, including Portrait of Kitty, lent by the New Art Gallery, Walsall.

Organised by The Fitzwilliam Museum and Marlborough Graphics in association with the National Galleries of Scotland.