Hodgkin was brought up in Hammersmith, west London. His father worked for Imperial Chemical Industries and his mother came from a Lancashire family of lawyers. His great-great-grandfather, Thomas Hodgkin, discovered the glandular disease later called Hodgkin’s Disease. His cousin Dorothy Hodgkin was a crystallographer and Nobel Prize winner. The artist and art critic Roger Fry was also a cousin, and Howard Hodgkin grew up in a home full of Omega Workshop objects produced by members of the Bloomsbury Group.
Prior to the outbreak of World War II, Hodgkin was evacuated to New York and stayed in a former governor’s residence on Long Island. Friends of his mother took him on his first visit to an art gallery, the Museum of Modern Art.
After the war, a rich relative paid for him to go to Eton, where his art teacher was Wilfred Blunt, the brother of the art critic and spy Anthony BLUNT.
Antony Peattie and Howard Hodgkin, David Hockney, 2002. © David Hockney
Sir Howard Hodgkin (born 6 August 1932) is a British painter and printmaker. His work is most often associated with abstraction. When he was in his forties he spent some time in India and later fell ill with amoebiasis. After a major operation he went through a period of depression. Soon afterward he realized that he was gay and left his wife. For a time his love life became public as he seemed to fall for several unsuitable men. In 1983 he settled down with the music writer Antony Peattie.
Red Bermudas 1978–80, The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Mr & Mrs Robyn Denny 1960, Courtesy Mr and Mrs John L Townsend III, Greenwich, Connecticut
Acacia Road 1966, Private collection
R.B.K. 1969-70, Oil on wood, support: 1091 x 1395 mm, Purchased 1997© Howard Hodgkin
Bombay Sunset 1972–3, Private Collection
Ellen Smart’s Indian Slide Show 1974–6, Private collection
Clean Sheets 1979-84, Oil on wood, unconfirmed: 559 x 914 mm, Purchased with assistance from Evelyn, Lady Downshire's Trust Fund 1992© Howard Hodgkin
Waking up in Naples 1980–4, Private Collection, London
Venice Evening 1984–5, Courtesy Gene and Nan Corman
Venice Sunset 1989, Private Collection
In 1962 Hodgkin had his first one-man show in London, and his first big retrospective was in 1976. He won the Turner Prize for contemporary art in 1985 and received his knighthood in 1992 and was made a Companion of Honour for Services to Art in the 2003 New Year honours.
His design "New Worlds" was used by the Royal Mail in 1999 for the sixty-four-pence British postage stamp in the quartet of stamps celebrating the end of the millennium.
In 2003 he was appointed by Queen Elizabeth II as a Companion of Honour. A major exhibition of his work was mounted at Tate Britain, London, in 2006. Also in 2006, The Independent declared him one of the 100 most influential gay people in Britain, as his work helps many people express their emotions to others.
In September, 2010 Hodgkin and five other British artists including John Hoyland, John Walker, Ian Stephenson, Patrick Caulfield and R.B. Kitaj were included in an exhibition entitled The Independent Eye: Contemporary British Art From the Collection of Samuel and Gabrielle Lurie, at the Yale Center for British Art.
His prints are hand-painted etchings and he has worked with the same master printer (Jack Shirreff at 107 Workshop) and print publisher (Alan Cristea Gallery) for the last 25 years.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Hodgkin
Further Readings:
Hardcover: 400 pages
Publisher: Thames & Hudson; THAMES & HUDSON edition (September 25, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0500093296
ISBN-13: 978-0500093290
Amazon: Howard Hodgkin: The Complete Paintings: A Catalogue Raisonne
The most complete book to date on one of the leading painters of the postwar generation: enlarged, updated, and redesigned.
Howard Hodgkin's career has spanned seven decades, and this extensive catalogue raisonne includes over 450 paintings, most reproduced in color.
Marla Price, an expert on the work of Hodgkin, has brought her 1995 catalogue raisonne completely up-to-date, with reproductions of over 150 recent paintings finished in the past decade. Invaluable information is given on the provenance of all the paintings, their exhibition histories, and published references to discussions of the works, while an introduction by John Elderfield sheds light on the artist's materials and techniques. The reference section includes a list of exhibitions and a chronology, and an extensive bibliography cites periodical and newspaper articles, the artist's statements and interviews, exhibition catalogues, and television and radio interviews. 472 illustrations, 413 in color
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