Nude on a Red Bed, No. 5

Paul Moorhouse (Leon Kossoff, Tate Gallery exhibition catalogue, London, 1996, p. 23) discusses the artist's development of the theme of the present work, 'Nude on a Red Bed, No. 1, 1968, belongs to the period immediately preceding the first swimming pool painting. The image is carried by the movement of the flow of the paint, which sweeps in a continuous flow of energy around the board. In contrast, in the magisterial Nude on a Red Bed, 1972, painted only four years later, the image seems to have been realised completely, yet with extraordinary simplicity and economy. A new tenderness is apparent in the quality of the drawing that caresses the figure, emphasising its nakedness, its angularities, softness, and vulnerability. Kossoff's use of line also divides the image into broad areas of colour - pale flesh, green, blue, sienna - which convey an atmosphere of intimacy and introspection. This emphasis on colour as a vehicle for feeling is the principal characteristic of Kossoff's paintings of the figure and landscape during the 1970s. He began to experiment with a range of non-local colours whose effect is evocative rather than descriptive'.