Sir Howard Hodgkin was one of the most celebrated figures in Modern British Art; the pure pleasure evoked by his sensuous brushwork and bold use of colour earned him widespread acclaim from both critics and the art-viewing public alike.
On the face of it an abstract artist, Hodgkin contrarily took immense pleasure in defining his work as figurative.
Rather, Hodgkin viewed his paintings as objects in themselves, and representational depictions of specific memories.
Hodgkin’s work encourages an art historical reading, with critics having written in the past of detecting traces of Turner, Hitchens, Matisse, and Seurat (as here) in his work. For his part, Hodgkin confessed to a reverence for the domestic works of the French artists Edouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard, and again his title here invites us into the intimacy of a moment spent with peers.
The 1980s were a decade of great recognition and career success for Hodgkin, who would go on to represent Britain in the Venice Biennale in 1984 and win the second ever Turner Prize Award in 1985.
Howard Hodgkin's Printmaking Practice
Howard Hodgkin developed a highly distinctive and internationally significant printmaking practice that runs parallel to his painted oeuvre. Working primarily in etching with aquatint and carborundum, sometimes on a monumental scale, Hodgkin used printmaking as a means of extending his expressive language of colour, memory and emotional abstraction into layered and technically complex compositions.
His prints are characterised by richly saturated colour, fluid brush-like gestures and partially obscured imagery, often built up through multiple printing stages to create surfaces that feel both constructed and spontaneous. Many of his works demonstrate his collaborations with master printers, particularly in pushing the boundaries of colour layering and tonal depth within the print medium. Jack Shirreff from the 107 Workshop in Wiltshire, for example, introduced the artist to the technique of using carborundum which became a key feature of many of his subsequent prints.
Hodgkin’s prints explore the themes of place, time and recollection. His editions remain highly sought after, valued for their painterly intensity and the way they translate his emotionally charged abstraction into a graphic and collectible form.
Illustrated: Howard Hodgkin C.H., C.B.E. (British 1932-2017) § | Bamboo, 2000 | Sold for £8,750 Inc. Premium
