School of London


The School of London was a loose movement of 20th century painters, based principally in London, who were interested in figurative painting, in contrast to the abstraction, minimalism, and conceptualism which were dominant at the time. Painters associated with the School of London included Michael Andrews, Frank Auerbach, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, David Hockney, Howard Hodgkin, R.B. Kitaj, and Leon Kossoff.
The term School of London was first used in the catalog for R.B. Kitaj's 1976 Hayward Gallery exhibition in which Kitaj wrote
There are artistic personalities in this small island more unique and strong and I think more numerous than anywhere in the world outside America's jolting artistic vigor. There are ten or more people in this town, or not far away, of world class, including my friends of abstract persuasion. In fact I think there is a substantial School of London... If some of the strange and fascinating personalities you may encounter here were given a fraction of the internationalist attention and encouragement reserved in this barren time for provincial and orthodox vanguardism, a School of London might be more real than the one I have construed in my head. A School of real London in England, in Europe... with potent art lessons for foreigners emerging from this odd old, put upon, very singular place.