Gagosian Gallery

Howard Hodgkin: Paintings

‘Gagosian is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings by Howard Hodgkin.

The exhibition will include thirteen new paintings completed between 1993 and 1998. This will be the first work by the artist shown in the United States since his critically acclaimed museum show organized by the Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, which traveled to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 1996.

These new works continue to explore emotional situations using a highly developed language of color and form. They border between abstraction and figuration and expand beyond the wooden boards to embrace the outer confines of the frame. The paintings refer to fragmented memories of the artist’s life, travels, friends, and places. In particular, a series of recent paintings has been dedicated to the memory of Max Gordon, the British architect.

As Susan Sontag has observed, “The distinctive shapes in Hodgkin’s pictures read like a vocabulary of signals for the circulation, collision, and rerouting of desire.” In this latest group of paintings, the gestures and brushstrokes have become more highly charged, the language more highly evolved. There is a freedom and vigor not seen before in Hodgkin’s work. Despite the fact that the canvases are sometimes reworked over the course of several years, the effect is one of spontaneity.

A fully illustrated catalogue will accompany the exhibition.’