1961

A ‘tidal wave’ of contemporary American art reaches London, with ‘Abstract Expressionism’ (1956) and ‘New American Painting’ (1959) at the Tate and Bryan Robertson’s shows of Jackson Pollock (1958) and Mark Rothko (1961) at the Whitechapel Gallery. “It is strange to think that it is possible to paint a picture which is so much bigger than you are”, Hodgkin told Alan Woods in 1998. “And that’s one of the gifts of the New York school; they taught us that more is more.”