A portrait purchased for under $50 at a Minnesota garage sale is at the center of a heated art world debate. The painting, ...

the collector had been intrigued by the painting’s impasto, a technique involving thickly laid paint. The 18-inch-tall portrait depicts a white-bearded man by the sea who is smoking a pipe and ...

Auerbach’s personalized impasto approach to portraits and cityscapes, as well as his refusal to blindly follow art world trends, characterized his 70-year career and lasting creative influence.

Applying thick areas of paint on a canvas like this is ... especially within his self-portraits. Claude Monet used the impasto technique to describe the texture and light of his subjects.