Two Seated Figures

This touching etching takes the artist's parents, Russian-Jewish immigrants to London's East End, as its subject and is closely related to a painting of the same name in the Tate collection. Kossoff has depicted his mother and father separately in numerous paintings and drawings. Etching is an important part of his practice and includes a series produced in response to - and directly in front of - Old Master paintings, revealing the artist's strong sense of artistic tradition, often including different versions of a single painting by artists including Poussin, Titian, Rubens and Rembrandt, reworked in his own individualistic, expressionistic and linear style.