Howard Hodgkin, Over to You, 2015–17, oil on wood, 9 3/4 × 12 3/8 inches (24.8 × 31.4 cm) © Howard Hodgkin. Photo by Prudence Cuming Associates.
Howard Hodgkin – Last Paintings – Gagosian Gallery Gagosian Gallery London presents ‘Last Paintings’, an exhibition of Howard Hodgkin’s final works. June 1 – July 28, 2018.]]>
Source: Gagosian Gallery
One of Britain’s most celebrated contemporary painters, Hodgkin composed powerful, expressive works that, while nominally abstract, bring representation, gesture, and affect into urgent relation. “Last Paintings”, presented at the Grosvenor Hill gallery in accordance with the late artist’s wishes, includes the final six paintings that he completed in India prior to his death, in March 2017, five of which will be exhibited for the first time. The exhibition includes more than twenty other paintings, never before exhibited in Europe.
In 1972 Hodgkin renounced working on canvas in favor of wooden panels and frames, some new and others sourced secondhand in India and Europe. The grain of the wood and the scars and scratches of the supports became integral to the paintings, affirming their physical presence and heft. “Last Paintings” attests to the immediacy of Hodgkin’s methods, as well as his intuitive understanding of the relationship between hand, eye, and memory.
In Hodgkin’s oeuvre, the legacy of British Romantics such as John Constable, J.M.W. Turner, and Samuel Palmer is palpable in his expressionistic colors, landscapes that bridge representation and abstraction, the sense of time’s passage, and with it the inherent transit of patterns both meteorological and emotional. The earliest work in the exhibition, “And the Skies Are Not Cloudy All Day” (2007–08) is nearly three meters in width, and painted on unprimed plywood. The title invokes the connection between nature and the human temperament, allowing their respective fluctuations to unfold gradually as though over the course of an entire day. On closer inspection, the grain of the plywood beneath its green paint emerges as a faint rhythmic pulse.
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