Sue Tilley

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Sue Tilley (* 1957 ) became known as a British nude model . Lucian Freud painted it a total of four times. One of these pictures, “ Benefits Supervisor Sleeping ” , was auctioned in May 2008 as the most expensive painting by a living artist to date.

Life

Sue Tilley works in the UK Employment Service. There she rose from employee ("Benefits Supervisor") to head of an employment office in central London. She got in touch with the painter Lucian Freud through a mutual acquaintance, the Australian performance artist Leigh Bowery , who was also Freud's model . Bowery met Sue Tilley as a cashier at the London nightclub "Taboo". Freud convinced Sue Tilley, who then weighed around 125 kilograms, to make herself available to him as a model for several years. Freud paid her £ 20 for each session . Freud painted Sue Tilley a total of four times. Before each session, Freud painted over his model's tattoos with flesh paint.

In 1993 she made her first oil painting, titled "Evening in the Studio" . "Big Sue," as Bowery called her, hated to remember it because she had to pose naked in an uncomfortable position on the bare floor. In 1995, however, she was able to make herself comfortable on a sofa in better posture , while Freud created the nude in about nine months , which was acquired by Russian billionaire Roman Arkadyevich Abramovich in 2008 for a record price of $ 33,641,000 . The image of the painting made Sue Tilley the first naked person on the front page of the Financial Times .

From September 2000 to March 2001, the Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt hosted the only overview exhibition of Freud's works in a German museum that was organized in close cooperation with the artist. The catalog as well as the invitation and poster show Freud's painting "Sleeping by the Lion Carpet" from 1995/96.

Sue Tilley has written a book about Leigh Bowery.

Sue Tilley as a model for Lucian Freud

painting

Etchings

  • Women Sleeping , 1995
Etching, 73 × 60 cm, edition of 36
  • Women with an Arm Tattoo , 1996
Etching, 60 × 81.9 cm, edition of 40

literature

  • Sue Tilley: Leigh Bowery: The life and times of an Icon ; London, 1997. ISBN 0-34069311-8

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lucian Freud. Exhibition catalog of the KHM Vienna. Edited by Sabine Haug u. Jasper Sharp. Munich: Prestel 2013. S.
  2. ↑ Lucien Freud, Rolf Lauter: Lucian Freud Naked Portraits. Works from the 40s to 90s. Works from the 1940s to the 1990s. . Frankfurt - Ostfildern-Ruit Museum for Modern Art Hatje Cantz Verlag, Frankfurt 2001, ISBN 978-3-7757-9043-7 (English).
  3. ↑ Fig.
  4. ↑ Fig.
  5. ↑ Fig.
  6. ↑ Fig.
  7. ↑ Fig.
  8. ↑ Fig.
personal data
SURNAME Tilley, Sue
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British nude model and author
DATE OF BIRTH 1957