Leon Kossoff: Selected Exhibitions
1976 - 2023

Soutine | Kossoff at Hastings Contemporary will close on 24 September 2023. To celebrate the occasion of this notable exhibition, which further situates the legacy of Leon Kossoff into the lineage of great European figurative painting, L.A. Louver is pleased to share a selection of significant exhibitions from the artist's life.

LEON KOSSOFF: SELECTED PAINTINGS 1956 - 2000
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark
19 November 2004 - 28 March 2005

Museum of Art Lucerne, Luzern, Switzerland
23 April - 17 July 2005
 
Conceived by Anders Kold, curator of the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, and Peter Fischer, Director of the Museum of Art Lucerne, this exhibition remains the largest exhibition to date of Kossoff's work in Denmark and Switzerland. Curated in special collaboration with the artist, this traveling exhibition was exceptional in its inclusion of works from Leon Kossoff's private archive alongside those from prestigious international collections.

LEON KOSSOFF: TATE RETROSPECTIVE
Tate Gallery, London, UK
6 June - 1 September 1996
 
A career retrospective of Leon Kossoff's work was held at the Tate Gallery, curated by Paul Moorhouse and including early work from the 1950s through 1996. William Feaver wrote of this exhibition in The Observer: "Cézanne was a hard exhibition to follow, but Kossoff succeeds more than honourably, magnificently in fact."

IDENTITY AND ALTERITY: FIGURES OF THE BODY 1895 - 1995
XLVI Venice Biennale
Venice, Italy
12 June - 15 October 1995

Curated by Jean Clair (a.k.a. Gerard Regnier), the director of the Picasso Museum in Paris at the time, this was the main exhibition at the 1995 Venice Biennale. Among the hundreds of works hung in this exhibition, Leon Kossoff's paintings were a primary focus in the press. The inclusion of Kossoff's artwork in this exhibition expanded his associations beyond the London School consortium and into the international art world.


LEON KOSSOFF: RECENT WORKS 1986 - 1994
XLVI Venice Biennale, British Pavilion
Venice, Italy
12 June - 15 October 1995

Düsseldorf Kunstverein, Düsseldorf, Germany
12 December 1995 - 21 January 1996

Stedelijk Museum
Amsterdam, Netherlands
8 February 1996 - 31 March 1996
 
In addition to being included in Jean Clair's Identity and Alterity, Leon Kossoff was chosen to represent Britain at the XLVI Venice Biennale in a presentation curated by David Sylvester, the preeminent curator and art critic of his generation. This was Kossoff's first major solo exhibition outside of the UK. Andrea Rose, who would later author Kossoff's catalogue raisonné published in 2021, was commissioner for the British Pavilion at the time. Kossoff's success at the Venice Biennale inspired the continuation of this presentation which traveled from Venice to the Düsseldorf Kunstverein in Germany and the Stedelijk Museum in the Netherlands.

THE HUMAN CLAY

Hayward Gallery, London, UK
1 January 1976 - 1 December 1976
 
In 1976, R.B. Kitaj organized a groundbreaking exhibition for the Arts Council of Great Britain which sparked numerous subsequent exhibitions and solidified the artists of the London School. The Human Clay presented work by British artists who drew and painted from life: Leon Kossoff, David Hockney, Frank Auerbach, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, and Michael Andrews.

Read Kitaj's full essay on the exhibition here. This document was reproduced on the occasion of L.A. Louver's 1979 two-part exhibition This Knot of Life which included William Coldstream, Lucien Freud, David Hockney, Howard Hodgkin, and Euan Uglow in Part I and Leon Kossoff, Frank Auerbach, Francis Bacon, Peter Blake, and R.B. Kitaj in Part II.