Howard
Hodgkin

When Hodgkin first began producing paintings during the 1950s, he resisted the draw of Pop Art that was attracting many artists and instead forged his own path. His first exhibition, held in 1962 at Arthur Tooth and Sons in London, was a commercial failure, although his work was often praised by critics. 'His work has none of the drabness which is too frequently associated by modern artists with pretensions to intellect', Edward Lucie-Smith writes '…this is painting to be enjoyed – that is, providing your idea of enjoyment doesn’t rule out the occasional need to think.'

In the years prior to his emergence as an Abstract Expressionist, when he produced works such as Memoirs (1949), Hodgkin’s work took on a more angular form and featured legible figures and landscapes.

Hodgkin started buying Indian paintings as a teenager after being introduced to Indian art by his art teacher at Eton. This was the start of a life-long passion for Indian painting and India more broadly. Hodgkin made multiple trips to India during his life and collected paintings avidly, infiltrating his work most obviously in his colour choice. Hodgkin told David Sylvester in 1984 that his ‘main reason for going back to India is because it is somewhere else.’ This suggests that Indian culture represented a form of escapism for the artist, a view that is tied up with the prevailing legacies of British colonialism from the time.

Hodgkin was also influenced by many older artists in Britain like Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson, who were loosely associated with abstract movements such as the St. Ives School.

Hodgkin’s impressive family tree features Bloomsbury group member Robert Fry, Thomas Hodgkin (who gave his name to Hodgkin’s Lymphoma), Luke Howard (who named the different types of clouds), and conductor Sir John Eliot Gardener. His father Eliot also won the Royal Horticultural Society’s gold medal, adding to the family’s collection of accolades. With such lineage, it is perhaps no wonder that Howard Hodgkin is one of the most decorated abstract painters and printmakers of modern times.

Earlier in his life, Hodgkin produced theatrical sets for performances by the likes of the Royal Ballet, and he later designed a commemorative stamp for the Royal Mail to mark the millennium and posters for many recent Olympic Games. Like many during this time in Britain when homosexuality was criminalised, Hodgkin felt pressured into a heterosexual relationship and married Julia Lane in 1955, having two children. Subsequently coming to terms with his homosexuality, Hodgkin left his wife and lived with his partner, Antony Peattie, for 20 years in Bloomsbury, London, until his death.

Hodgkin died in 2017 on the day his show 'Absent Friends' was hung at the National Portrait Gallery. He died in the middle of a creative streak, painting with long brushes and held upright by his assistants, despite using a wheelchair.

Hodgkin visited India for the last time a year before his death, where he produced six paintings which were displayed at the 'Painting India' show in Hepworth, Wakefield in 2017. In 2018, the Gagosian held an exhibition of more than 20 works entitled Last Paintings, which demonstrated the ultimate progression of Hodgkin’s style. Not only were many of these works produced on wooden panels sourced in India, but they also demonstrate Hodgkin’s bold colour and expression in their most stringent form.