Howard Hodgkin 1932-2017

Born in London, he was evacuated to the USA for a period as a child,and was trained at Camberwell 1949-50, and at Bath Academy of Art 1950-4. He taught at Charter House School, 1954-6, at the Bath Academy, 1956-66 and at Chelsea School or Art 1966-74. He was Artist-in-Residence at Brasenose college, Oxford, 1976-7. During the 1950s he painted mask-like faces (e.g. Dancing, 1959).

Widely travelled in Europe and America, his visits to India have been of great importance to him; he draws on his great knowledge of Mughal Miniatures, which he collects, for the development of his semi-abstract, intensely coloured evocations of friends in their interiors, executed usually on board and often small in scale, often also integrating the painting of the frame with the picture itself. His usual method is to start from a memory, eliminating excess detail in order to concentrate the essence of of his experience in a saturation of colour and pattern, sometimes overpainting a work for several years. He had a show of Forty Paintings 1973-84 at the Venice Biennale of 1984, which also inaugurated the renovated Whitechapel Gallery. In 1985 he won the Turner Prize. He has been a trustee of the Tate and National Galleries.

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