Kira

Kololeikina

he book is dedicated to the memory of the modern English expressionist artist. Leon Kossoff, who has died aged 92, once said: "London, like the paint I use, seems to be in my bloodstream." His work was rooted in Dalston, Willesden, the Embankment, Mornington Crescent, Spitalfields and Bethnal Green, in the London roads and railway lines, the tube stations and street life, in the public swimming baths. But it went far beyond topography: it was an expression of the undying human need to wrest a separate existence for art from the universal stuff of local daily life.