Howard Hodgkin

Howard Hodgkin needs no introduction as he is one of the most important artists working in Britain today. Hodgkin was awarded the Turner Prize in 1985 and later knighted by the Queen in 1992. In 2006, Tate Britain staged the first exhibition to span the entire career of Howard Hodgkin after his work had been exhibited at museums around the world before that time. Hodgkin emerged as a major figure in British art in the 1970's with his expressionistic abstract style, adopting the wooden panel and frame and defining painting as object.  From the 1990's to the present, Hodgkin's work has become looser and more gestural after a slightly representational period in the 1980's.  His work in Nothing Fixed combines both the painted-on wooden frame and loose, gestural brush marks.  Hodgkin has named this work Technicolor although his palette of reds and blues is quite restrained.  However, the way Hodgkin introduces these colours to each other in frantic zigzagged wavelengths of pure colour that flow onto the wooden frame makes Technicolour fresh, alive and unsettled.  Binding together all of his work is his consistent exploration of the representation of personal experiences, emotional encounters and memories of specific events, albeit obscured by a layering of the picture surface with distinct marks and intense colours, often achieved over a period of several years.  Hodgkin's picture on show was done over a two-year period from 2009 to 2010.