Chronology

Hodgkin participates in the inaugural edition of the Toulouse International Art Festival in May 2013, with a solo exhibition at the Fondation Bemberg. At the invitation of the Festival’s Artistic Director the artist Jean-Marc Bustamante, Hodgkin was represented by twenty two paintings covering more than sixty years of his career.

Exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery, ‘Howard Hodgkin: New Paintings’, in Rome.

An exhibition of 22 new paintings opens at Gagosian Gallery, Paris, Hodgkin’s first solo show in the city. Works include Blue Door (2009-12), The Sea, Goa (2013), Indian Waves (2013-2014) and For Matisse (2011-2014). Hodgkin completed many of them in Mumbai, where he starts to keep a studio in the winter months. Watch video of the Gagosian exhibition.

Alan Cristea Gallery, Cork Street, London shows ‘Green Thoughts’, 19 new prints, including the hand-painted carborundum relief, For Alan (2014). Printed in seven colour variations, the work testifies to Hodgkin’s close working relationship with gallery owner and publisher Alan Cristea, which spans over 20 years. The show’s title Green Thoughts refers to a couplet in Andrew Marvell’s 17th-century poem The Garden, “Annihilating all that’s made To a green thought in a green shade”. Andrew Marr’s essay in the catalogue was reprinted in the Guardian, headed, ‘Howard Hodgkin: the witty, glittery Proust of painters’.

Hodgkin was the first artist to be given the Swarovski Whitechapel Gallery Art Icon award in 2014. The prize honours the lifetime achievement of one of Britain’s greatest artists. Hodgkin was chosen by a panel chaired by Iwona Blazwick, Director, Whitechapel Gallery, with Stephen Deuchar, Director, The Art Fund; Ann Gallagher, Head of Collections (British Art), Tate; and, Jackie Wullschlager, Chief Art Critic, The Financial Times. To present the award Hodgkin invited Martin Creed, who performed his song, ‘I’m feeling orange, I’m feeling pink’. Read more.

At the end of the year Hodgkin shows ‘Indian Waves’ at Gagosian Gallery, Davies Street, London, some thirty gouaches inspired by India, printed and painted by Hodgkin on hand-made khadi paper at the 107 Workshop, Wiltshire, England between 1990 and 1991. They were put aside and forgotten until the workshop closed.

Hodgkin continues to work from Mumbai in the winter months. In February 2015 the major museum in Mumbai, the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, presents ‘Howard Hodgkin: Paintings 1984 – 2015, A Tribute’, a collaboration between, CSMVS, Tate and the Jehangir Nicholson Art Foundation, with the support of the British Council and Gagosian Gallery. The catalogue includes a foreword by Nicholas Serota, Director, Tate, and a text by Shanay Jhaveri. It is the most comprehensive show of Hodgkin’s work to be staged in India.

He paints Poppies (2015) for the Royal Mail, which commissions the design to mark the centenary of the First World War. Hodgkin’s Light Falling (2015) is inspired by Carl Phillips’s poem, ‘What I see is the light falling all around us’ and printed in T: The New York Times Style Magazine’ in the series ‘A Picture and A Poem: Poetry and Art’.

A solo show of paintings opens at Galerie Andres Thalmann, Zurich, Switzerland and of prints at the Galerie Eric Dupont, Paris, France, both 2015.

In 2016 Hodgkin exhibits 24 new paintings at Gagosian Gallery, Madison Avenue, New York, ‘From Memory’. Works include Morning (2015–16), Dirty Window (2014–15), Love Song (2015) and Blues for Mrs. Chatterjee (2015). The catalogue features an essay by James Lawrence. Many of the pictures were completed during Hodgkin’s winter stay in India.

He also made a print, For Antony (2016), pictured, to contribute towards Antony Peattie’s new, extensively illustrated book, The Private Life of Lord Byron, to be published by Unbound. It will be reproduced as end papers.