Painter of the naked wallpaper, Lucian Freud dies (Video)

In a statement his New York-based art dealer and close friend William Acquavella said the realist painter died on Wednesday following a brief illness, but gave no further details.
Freud was known for his intense realist portraits, particularly of nudes.
In recent years his paintings commanded huge prices at auction, including one called Naked Woman on a Sofa that sold for $33.6 million (£20.5million) in 2008. Last month, a portrait entitled Woman Smiling, 1958-59, sold for £4,745,250.
Mr Acquavella said he would mourn Freud “as one of the great painters of the twentieth century.”
“My family and I mourn Lucian Freud not only as one of the great painters of the twentieth century but also as a very dear friend.



He stubbornly developed his own unique style, eventually winning recognition as one of the world's greatest painters.
“He certainly is considered one of the most important painters of the 20th and 21st Centuries,” said Brett Gorvy, deputy chairman of the postwar art department at Christie's auction house in New York.
“He stayed with his figurative approach even when it was extremely unpopular, when abstraction was the leading concept, and as time moved on his classic approach has proven to be very important. He fought the system and basically won.”
Freud, grandson of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, was born in Berlin in 1922. His Jewish family was forced to flee the city in 1933 and he became a British citizen in 1939.