Leon Kossoff

Leon Kossoff 

 1981 Oil on board,

Kossoff expresses a culture of thickly painted portraits introduced into the 1900’s and is when the appearance of the painting turn from realistic facial feathers and colours to work that expressed exaggerated colour or features shown though the early 18^th century Edvard Munch The Sick Child Det syke barn, 1907. Kossoff’s interpretation of portraits is strong and powerful as the paint is a definite thing and the way that he applies the paint and the way that he is so continuous within his technique and the way that he wants layers and layers of paint to portray the subject of his portraits different to what would be expected and is adapting the impasto technique. Kossoff is an extremely important artist in the growth and evolution of impasto as he was and still is the only artist that applies paint so thickly that it creates this high textured surface of human form and although the subjects are seen as isolated and alone it has an elegance which is represented within the choice of subject that Kossoff’s repeatedly chosen. Kossoff is important for the development of impasto due to his technique in the raised surface and extreme texture. This surface is first demonstrated in Van Gogh’s Wheat Field with Cypresses 1889. Although the visual appearance of the landscape is nowhere near the extremely encrusted surface visible in Kossoff’s work, but it is possible that Kossoff was inspired by van Gogh’s paintings due to its thickly impasto texture. Kossoff also suggests that within his paintings that there is a sadness and isolated elements which can be represented with his painting, which is not evident within van Gogh’s paint, although he was considered to be the most depressed and mentally unstable artist?  The way Kossoff manipulates layers and layers of thick paint is extraordinary and not only does it create this abstracted over use of the medium but he then transforms it into portraits of relatives and close friends. The affect that Kossoff has had on the impasto he has changed the way he paints, which has evolved the technique to the point where the impasto is so thickly applied that it has created a 3d affect and rough.