The Centre Pompidou is to pay tribute to Lucian Freud, one of the greatest of contemporary painters. Now 88 years old, he is one of the world’s most important living artists. He has not shown in France since the Centre’s last major retrospective of his work nearly a quarter of a century ago, in 1987, though his fame has since then only grown and his place in the history of art become ever more assured.

The exhibition will present an outstanding selection of Freud’s work, consisting of some fifty large-format paintings, mostly from private collections, together with a number of prints and drawings, as well as photographs of the artist’s London studio.

The exhibition is organised around the theme of the studio, this enclosed space so essential to Freud’s paintings and to his practice as a painter. Occupying more than 900 square metres, it will bring together most of the painter’s Large Interiors, his variations on the Old Masters, his self-portraits, and more recent very large portraits of Leigh Bowery and Big Sue...