Howard Hodgkin, emotions with pictorial dynamics

London,

Until his death in 2017, Howard Hodgkin was one of the most internationally recognised living British artists, although he did not seek it out at all because his production escaped the most representative trends of the second half of the 20th century: his paintings, as he himself explained, represent emotional situations and he tried to recreate the intensity of those experiences in them. His abstractions were the fruit of his memory and he revealed and concealed these themes that he cultivated through superimpositions of layers of colours, usually bright, and distinctive marks, in a process that, contrary to what it might seem, lasted several years after extensive phases of reflection and deliberation (time, we can say, was part of the same procedure).

Hodgkin’s career, as we said, followed a very different path from that of his generation of companions who were linked to Pop Art: if in his first creations he portrayed his artist friends in an unconventional way, already with the aim of capturing their feelings on canvas, or sought to reflect scenarios of social gatherings through fragmented forms and pictorial symbols, from the end of the sixties he began to experiment with different formats and supports, among them the painted frame, which would become one of his hallmarks and which, while fitting the theme, arouses the viewer’s attention to the works themselves as objects. He therefore moved away from obvious figurative references to open his themes towards nature and the environments he knew on his travels: one he made to India in 1964 was particularly important for him, as he was very attracted to its colours, and he would remain in that country for long periods from then on.

He would abandon working on canvas in favour of using wooden panels and frames, some new and some second-hand, allowing the grain of the wood and its scars and scratches to become an integral part of the paintings, asserting their physical presence and weight. His atmospheric references included Constable, Turner and Samuel Palmer, in the case of the latter two, for their conjunction of representation and abstraction in the landscape, their desire to capture the sense of the passage of time and, with it, the inherent transit of both meteorological and emotional patterns.

In the latter phase of his career, from the 1970s onwards, the emotional intensity of his work grew. He adopted more intimate themes and pure colours to express transient moods and, occasionally, erotic situations. These paintings offer glimpses of reality, simultaneously revealing and concealing. In 1984, exactly forty years ago, Hodgkin represented his country at the Venice Biennale with a series of small paintings in which he sought to reflect the changing light of the city with unexpected precision. At the same time, he continued to play with scale, trying to make his larger pieces seem intimate and his smaller ones heroic in tone. In the 1990s he adopted a more expressive and gestural style with more complex themes and a looser brushstroke.

Until his later years, he continued to explore new forms of expression: he applied fewer layers of paint to his panels, leaving a larger surface of the wooden support exposed, allowing it to interact with the pigment. He also gave increasing importance to the transitory, as opposed to retrospection or the recollection of past images.

Howard Hodgkin. Gagosian Burlington Arcade, 2024

Coinciding with the Venetian anniversary, Gagosian is presenting an exhibition at its Burlington Arcade (London) this month, until September 28, that reviews the diversity of subjects that inspired this author, from antiquities and painting of yesterday and today to design, food, literature and the aforementioned travels; also his desire to link gesture and affection.

In this room, which has been exhibiting Hodgkin since 1998, we will see the vivid oil painting on wood Always Afternoon (2016), a composition in red, blue, brown and white that could be seen in 2017 at the firm’s headquarters in Hong Kong and which represents a translation of personal memories into exalted pure color, linking hand, eye and emotion. Also a selection of his prints, including Indian Leaves (1982), a lithograph produced for the limited edition cover of the catalogue documenting the Tate exhibition of the eponymous series.