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Howard Hodgkin

Howard Hodgkin, Now, 2015–16 Oil on wood, 15 ¼ × 18 ¼ inches (38.7 × 46.4 cm)© Howard Hodgkin

Howard Hodgkin, Now, 2015–16

Oil on wood, 15 ¼ × 18 ¼ inches (38.7 × 46.4 cm)
© Howard Hodgkin

Howard Hodgkin, From Memory, 2014–15 Oil on wood, 27 ⅞ × 33 ⅛ inches (70.8 × 84.1 cm)© Howard Hodgkin, photo by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd

Howard Hodgkin, From Memory, 2014–15

Oil on wood, 27 ⅞ × 33 ⅛ inches (70.8 × 84.1 cm)
© Howard Hodgkin, photo by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd

Howard Hodgkin, For Matisse, 2011–14 Oil on wood, 45 ¾ × 54 ⅞ inches (116.2 × 139.4 cm)© Howard Hodgkin

Howard Hodgkin, For Matisse, 2011–14

Oil on wood, 45 ¾ × 54 ⅞ inches (116.2 × 139.4 cm)
© Howard Hodgkin

Howard Hodgkin, An Open Door, 2008–11 Oil on wood, 18 × 23 ¾ inches (45.7 × 60.3 cm)© Howard Hodgkin

Howard Hodgkin, An Open Door, 2008–11

Oil on wood, 18 × 23 ¾ inches (45.7 × 60.3 cm)
© Howard Hodgkin

Howard Hodgkin, Listening, 2003–05 Oil on wood, 53 ⅞ × 61 ½ inches (136.8 × 156.2 cm)© Howard Hodgkin

Howard Hodgkin, Listening, 2003–05

Oil on wood, 53 ⅞ × 61 ½ inches (136.8 × 156.2 cm)
© Howard Hodgkin

About

For an artist, time can always be regained . . . because by an act of imagination you can always go back.
—Howard Hodgkin

One of England’s most celebrated contemporary painters, Howard Hodgkin (1932–2017) was deeply attuned to the interplay of gesture, color, and ground. His brushstrokes, set against wooden supports, often continue beyond the picture plane and onto the frame, breaking from traditional confines. Embracing time as a compositional element, his work is testament to his immersion in the intangibility of thoughts, feelings, and fleeting private moments.

Hodgkin was born in London and grew up in Hammersmith Terrace. During World War II he was evacuated to Long Island, New York, for three years. In the Museum of Modern Art, New York, he saw works by School of Paris artists such as Henri Matisse, Édouard Vuillard, and Pierre Bonnard, which he could not easily have seen then in London or Paris. Back in England in 1943, Hodgkin ran away from Eton College and Bryanston School, convinced that education would impede his progress as an artist, though he encountered inspiring teachers at both schools. He then attended Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts (1949–50) and Bath Academy of Art, Corsham (1950–54).

Hodgkin never belonged to a school or group. While many of his contemporaries were drawn to Pop or the School of London, he remained independent, initially marking his outsider status with a series of portraits of contemporary artists and their families. His first solo exhibition was at Arthur Tooth and Sons in London in 1962. Two years later he first visited India, following his interest in Indian miniatures, which began during his time at Eton. Collecting Indian art would remain a lifelong passion, which he initially supported by dealing in picture frames.

In 1984 Hodgkin represented Britain at the Biennale di Venezia. His exhibition Forty Paintings reopened the Whitechapel Gallery, London, in 1985, and he won the Turner Prize the same year. In 1998 Hodgkin joined Gagosian, and the gallery presented his first show in the United States since his critically acclaimed 1995–96 exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, which had traveled to the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas; Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf; and Hayward Gallery, London. His first full retrospective opened at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, in 2006 and traveled to Tate Britain, London, and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid. In the autumn of 2016 Hodgkin visited India for what was to be the last time, completing six new paintings before his return to London. These works were shown at England’s Hepworth Wakefield in 2017, in Painting India, a show that focused on the artist’s long-standing relationship with the Indian subcontinent.

Starting in the 1950s, Hodgkin maintained a parallel printmaking practice, translating his visual language into works on paper. Exploring the interactions of color and space on a grander scale, he produced theatrical set designs for Ballet Rambert, the Royal Ballet, and the Mark Morris Dance Group. His black stone and white marble mural fronts the British Council’s headquarters in New Delhi. Additionally, Hodgkin designed a stamp for the Royal Mail to mark the millennium; textiles for Designers Guild; and posters and prints for the Olympic Games in Sarajevo, London, Sochi, and Rio de Janeiro.

Hodgkin was knighted in 1992 and made a Companion of Honour in 2003. He was awarded the Shakespeare Prize in Hamburg in 1997, and in 2014 won the first Swarovski Whitechapel Gallery Art Icon award.

Howard Hodgkin

Photo: Terence Donovan © Terence Donovan Archive

Fairs, Events & Announcements

Installation view, Indian Skies: The Howard Hodgkin Collection of Indian Court Painting, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, February 6–June 9, 2024. Photo: Hyla Skopitz

Lecture

Howard Hodgkin and India
Reflections on Art Making and Collecting

Friday, March 15, 2024, 6pm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
www.metmuseum.org

Join experts close to Howard Hodgkin, including his partner of thirty-three years, Antony Peattie, for a personal look at the artist’s lifetime engagement with India and Indian painting. Over the course of sixty years, Hodgkin formed a collection of Indian paintings and drawings that is recognized as one of the finest of its kind. This lecture brings together Peattie along with Glenn Lowry, director of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Met curators John Guy and Navina Haidar to discuss Hodgkin’s artistic practice and his collection. It is organized as part of the Annual Distinguished Lecture on the Arts of South and Southeast Asia series in conjunction with the exhibition Indian Skies: The Howard Hodgkin Collection of Indian Court Painting, on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, through June 9.

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Installation view, Indian Skies: The Howard Hodgkin Collection of Indian Court Painting, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, February 6–June 9, 2024. Photo: Hyla Skopitz

Gagosian’s booth at ART SG 2023. Artwork, left to right: © Ashley Bickerton; © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2022; © Banksy; © Zeng Fanzhi; © 2020 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All rights reserved. Photo: Sebastiano Pellion di Persano

Art Fair

ART SG 2023

January 12–15, 2023, booth BF05
Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre, Singapore
artsg.com

Gagosian is pleased to announce the gallery’s participation in the inaugural edition of ART SG, with a selection of works by international contemporary artists including Banksy, Georg Baselitz, Ashley Bickerton, Edmund de Waal, Helen Frankenthaler, Katharina Grosse, Mark Grotjahn, Damien Hirst, Howard Hodgkin, Thomas Houseago, Tetsuya Ishida, Alex Israel, Jia Aili, Harmony Korine, Takashi Murakami, Nam June Paik, Giuseppe Penone, Ed Ruscha, Spencer Sweeney, Sarah Sze, Tatiana Trouvé, Anna Weyant, Jonas Wood, and Zeng Fanzhi.

Gagosian’s booth at ART SG 2023. Artwork, left to right: © Ashley Bickerton; © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2022; © Banksy; © Zeng Fanzhi; © 2020 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All rights reserved. Photo: Sebastiano Pellion di Persano

Howard Hodgkin: Last Paintings (New York: Gagosian, 2018)

Online Reading

Howard Hodgkin
Last Paintings

Howard Hodgkin: Last Paintings is available for online reading from September 6 through October 5 as part of the From the Library series. Published on the occasion of his 2018 exhibition at Gagosian, Grosvenor Hill, London, the catalogue celebrates Hodgkin’s final works, many of which had never been previously published. His brushstrokes, set against wooden supports, often continue beyond the picture plane and onto the frame, breaking from traditional confines. Embracing time as a compositional element, his work is testament to his immersion in the intangibility of thoughts, feelings, and fleeting private moments. A new essay by Paul Hills is included along with a biography by Antony Peattie and poem by Stevie Smith.

Howard Hodgkin: Last Paintings (New York: Gagosian, 2018)

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Museum Exhibitions

Installation view, Indian Skies: The Howard Hodgkin Collection of Indian Court Painting, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, February 6–June 9, 2024. Photo: Hyla Skopitz

On View

Indian Skies
The Howard Hodgkin Collection of Indian Court Painting

Through June 9, 2024
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
www.metmuseum.org

Over the course of sixty years, Howard Hodgkin formed a collection of Indian paintings and drawings that is recognized as one of the finest of its kind. The artist collected works from the Mughal, Deccani, Rajput, and Pahari courts dating from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. This exhibition presents over 120 of these works, many of which the Metropolitan Museum of Art recently acquired, alongside loans from the Howard Hodgkin Indian Collection Trust.

Installation view, Indian Skies: The Howard Hodgkin Collection of Indian Court Painting, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, February 6–June 9, 2024. Photo: Hyla Skopitz

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Textiles de Artistas

March 12–June 19, 2022
Fundacíon Barrié, A Coruña, Spain
fundacionbarrie.org

This exhibition explores the history of twentieth-century art through fabrics designed by artists, with unique examples from artistic movements such as Fauvism, Cubism, Surrealism, and Pop art. Comprised of more than one hundred works, the show presents an important overview of weaving as a popular art form in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Europe. Work by Alexander Calder, Damien Hirst, Howard Hodgkin, Henry Moore, Pablo Picasso, Sterling Ruby, and Andy Warhol is included.

Albert Oehlen, Untitled, 1989, Museum of Modern Art, New York © Albert Oehlen 

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Artist’s Choice
Amy Sillman—The Shape of Shape

October 21, 2019–April 12, 2020
Museum of Modern Art, New York
www.moma.org

In The Shape of Shape, Amy Sillman—an artist who has helped redefine contemporary painting, pushing the medium into drawing, installations, video, and zines—has created a revelatory Artist’s Choice installation drawn from the museum’s collection. The exhibition features works, many rarely seen, spanning vastly different time periods, places, and mediums. Work by Jay DeFeo, Helen Frankenthaler, Howard Hodgkin, Henry Moore, Albert Oehlen, and Christopher Wool is included.

Albert Oehlen, Untitled, 1989, Museum of Modern Art, New York © Albert Oehlen 

Installation view, Hodgkin & Creed: Inside Out, Kistefos, Jevnaker, Norway, September 18–November 17, 2019. Artwork, left to right: © Howard Hodgkin Estate; © Martin Creed. Photo: Timothy Chase

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Hodgkin & Creed
Inside Out

September 18–November 17, 2019
Kistefos, Jevnaker, Norway
www.kistefosmuseum.com

Inside Out finds a series of relationships that take us beyond a lyrical reading of Howard Hodgkin’s paintings and radically rethinks his oeuvre. At the same time, the exhibition approaches Martin Creed’s Minimalist work through Hodgkin’s expressionism, drawing on a number of themes including: Minimalist seriality, concepts around objects and language, emotional reparation, the performative body (with its relation to time), and the work of art itself.

Installation view, Hodgkin & Creed: Inside Out, Kistefos, Jevnaker, Norway, September 18–November 17, 2019. Artwork, left to right: © Howard Hodgkin Estate; © Martin Creed. Photo: Timothy Chase

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Press

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