At the age of 8, in 1939, his Jewish parents sent him to school in Kent to avoid the political situation in Germany (on the eve of the 2nd World War and after 6 years of the Nazi Party being in power). That was the last contact he had with them.

After the 2nd World War he acted in small parts in several London theatres and in 1947 attended painting classes at the Hampstead Garden Suburb Institute . The following year he attended the Borough Polytechnic Institute before entering St. Martin’s School of Art, where he met Leon Kossoff and Phil Holmes.

 In 1952 Auerbach studied at the Royal College of Art with Joe Tilson, Bridget Riley and Leon Kossoff after being judged unfit for military service. In 1954 he acquired Gustav Metzger’s former studio in Camden, London. He continued participating in David Bomberg’s drawing classes at the Borough throughout 1954. The following year he left the Royal College with a silver medal and first-class honors

1956 saw his first one-man show at the Beaux Arts Gallery. Around this time he began painting a series of building sites and Julia Yardley Mills (JYM) began to model for portraits. In 1958 he married Julia Wolstenholme. Son Jacob was born.

 At the beginning of the 60s, Auerbach began studies of great works of art, which included Rembrandt’s Deposition and Titian’s Tarquin and Lucretia. In 1966, he began a series focused on Camden Palace Theatre.

1978 saw his first retrospective by the Arts Council of Great Britain for Hayward Gallery, London. In 1981 his work was shown at the New Spirit in Painting show at the Royal Academy, London. Five years later, he was chosen for the British Pavilion at the XLII Venice Biennale. Won the Golden Lion Prize with Sigmar Polke.

In 1995, the National Gallery exhibition : Working After the Masters focused on Auerbach's studies of works in the gallery over a 30-year period. 2000 and the Artists of CORNER Udstillingen invited Auerbach to be a guest artist at their annual exhibition in Copenhagen.

2000 and the newly-opened Tate Modern displayed a room of his pictures. The following year a film by Hannah Rothschild and Jake Auerbach documented the locations and sitters in Auerbach’s work.

Also in 2001, and to mark the artist's 71st year, theRoyal Academy had a retrospective exhibition of his work.

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

1956 Beaux-Arts Gallery, London
1965 Marlborough Fine Art, London
1978 Hayward Gallery, London (Arts Council of Great Britain)
1982 Marlborough Gallery, New York
1986 British Pavilion XLII Venice Biennale (Awarded the Golden Lion)
1986-87 Kunstverein in Hamburg; Museum Folkwang, Essen; Centro de Arte Reina, Sofia, Madrid
1989 Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam
1991 Yale Center for British Art, New Haven
1995 National Gallery, London
1997 Marlborough Fine Art, London
1998 Marlborough Gallery, New York
2001 Retrospective Exhibition, Royal Academy, London

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS:

Arts Council of Great Britain; British Museum; Los Angeles County Museum; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Portrait Gallery, London; Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; Tate Britain; Yale Center for British Art