The first large scale exhibition to offer a full appraisal of Howard Hodgkin’s entire career in print is showing at Abbott Hall Art Gallery in Kendal from March 27 until June 30 2007.
Best known as a painter, Hodgkin was born in London in 1932 and studied at the Camberwell School of Art and Bath Academy of Art from 1949 – 54.
It wasn’t however until the 1970s that he really came to the attention of the wider art world. This was a time when his style became more spontaneous and abstract and he has since experimented with a variety of forms arriving at his looser and gestural paintings of the 1990s to the present.
Today he is regarded as one of Britain’s most respected artists of international standing and Howard Hodgkin Prints offers an overview of the artist’s beautiful produced prints, which he has crafted himself over the last 40 years.
Ranging in size from very large to smaller works the exhibition reveals an artist who has continually explored the possibilities of printmaking using a variety of media and techniques to produce a substantial body of work as accomplished as his oils.
The challenge, as in all of Hodgkin’s graphic work, is to capture the poetry and energy of the paintings and bring out the vibrancy of the brush work and the intensity of colour.
To achieve this Hodgkin has broken many of the rules of the printmaker’s craft and the results are reckoned to be amongst the most stunning effects to be found in contemporary printmaking.
Both Hodgkin’s prints and paintings are largely based on memory. Meticulously produced via a process of remembering, the etchings and lithographs that dominate the prints he has produced over the last 20 years are also produced as a series of layers.
His experiments have included working with softground, aquatint, carborundum and etching, sometimes combined with hand colouring. The result is an extraordinary sense of depth achieved through the various layers of colours and textures.
These prints reveal an artist printmaker who is constantly reinventing his personal language of marks and scores and whilst portraying emotion through from and colour.
Hodgkin’s paintings were the subject of popular major retrospective at Tate Modern in 2006. For people who either missed it or enjoyed it, this exhibition offers another chance to experience the work of one Britain’s most respected and popular artists.
Abbot Hall, Kendal, LA9 5AL, Cumbria, England
T: 01539 722464
Open: Mon - Sat 10.30 - 17.00
18 January - 20 December 2008
Winter Closing Time - 16.00
18 January - 21 March & 1 November - 20 December 2008
Closed: Sun
