1970-1979 (9)

1971

First solo show abroad with 8 pictures at the Gallerie Müller, Cologne, Germany, including David Hockney Drawing (pictured), Mr and Mrs Peter Blake and his portrait of Ron Kitaj, R.B.K. (view gallery).

Shows recent paintings at Kasmin Limited, London (view gallery).

His impressions of India seen through windows and from trains emerge as Indian Views, 12 screenprints published by Leslie Waddington Prints, London. More Indian Views, 5 lithographs, are published by Bernard Jacobson in 1976. Kasmin hires a chateau in Carennac, France for the summer and invites artists he represents to bring their families.

1972

Participates in Patrick Caulfield, Howard Hodgkin, Michael Moon at the Galerie Stadler, Paris (view gallery). At the time all three artists lived and worked on separate floors of the same house in West London.

1966 - 1972

Teaches part time at Chelsea School of Art, London, along with Martin Froy.

1973

At the age of 41 H makes his American debut at the Jill Kornblee Gallery in New York with 9 paintings (view gallery): “they realized at once what sort of artist I was when I first showed in New York”, he told Edward Lucie-Smith in 1981, “…the reaction was such that I felt I was communicating with an audience. I’ve rarely felt that in England.”

In New York he will later show with Andre Emmerich, Lawrence Rubin at Knoedler and with Gagosian.

1975

He shows nine recent paintings at the Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol and Dartington Hall, Devon, including Talking about Art, the first picture in which he leaves parts of the wooden surface unpainted.

Acute depression is finally recognized as a symptom of amoebic hepatitis, contracted in India eight years previously. Recovers and returns to India as one of 3 British artists in the 3rd Indian Triennale in Delhi. Becomes a friend of Foy Nissen of the British Council in Bombay and visits the studio of Jamini Roy.

Separates from his wife and acknowledges his homosexuality.

 

1976

Appointed CBE. Artist in residence for a year at Brasenose College, Oxford.

Shows 9 new paintings at Waddington Galleries, London.

Awarded second prize at the 10th John Moore’s Liverpool Exhibition for Cafeteria at the Grand Palais.

First retrospective exhibition ‘Forty-five Paintings, 1949-1975’ opens at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford. Richard Morphet writes in the catalogue. Works include Bombay Sunset and Small Durand Gardens, where Morphet then lived.

Makes a print, After Luke Howard, for a bicentennial portfolio tribute, ‘For John Constable’, published by Bernard Jacobson, along with works by Peter Blake, Bill Brandt, Barry Flanagan, Duncan Grant, David Hockney, John Hoyland, Richard Smith and others. Luke Howard, a distant relation, after whom Hodgkin was named, wrote the ‘Essay on the Modification of Clouds’ (1803), that inspired Constable’s cloud studies. Read more here.

Small Durand Gardens, 1974

1970 - 1976

Becomes a Trustee of the Tate Gallery.

1977

For the first time H applies paint to a print, Julian and Alexis. He also asks his son Sam to help him colour the edition, under his supervision. From now on he will add hand colouring to all his prints.

Foy Nissen’s Bombay hangs in the Hayward Annual. Current British Art Selected by Michael Compton, Howard Hodgkin and William Turnbull.

Buys a flat in a house near the British Museum. Eventually buys the rest of the building and the former dairy behind the house, which becomes a studio.

Meets Nick Underwood, a friend of George Lawson and Wayne Sleep, and visits him in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where Underwood attends Oral Roberts University. Creates a series of prints for Petersburg Studios, Nick, A Furnished Room, Jarid’s Porch, Nick’s Room and Storm, as well as paintings such as Lawson Underwood & Sleep, Jealousy and a gouache, A Storm. Lawson’s comment on a living room in a Tulsa suburb inspired H’s print Here we are in Croydon.

Working with Danny Levy in the Petersburg Press Studio, New York, 1977.

1979

Selects work from the National Gallery’s collection for an exhibition in their series ‘The Artist’s Eye’. Renoir’s Dancing Girl with Castanets and Dancing Girl with Tambourine flank the entrance against yellow backgrounds. “English people don’t seem to like these paintings much”, he comments in the catalogue so he installs banks of red geraniums underneath them to help people see them better. He brings up the fragments of Manet’s Execution of Maximilian I from the reserve collection in order to assemble them on one canvas (as a previous owner, Degas, had done) and installs Tiepolo’s ceiling panel as a ceiling panel. Both innovations persist. His plan to cover the room’s walls with bright, floral patterned, Indian cotton is not realized for ‘technical reasons’. Instead works by Velazquez (without its “hideous frame”), Mantegna, Fabritius and others hang on walls covered in navy blue bunting. The series always includes works by the artist; Hodgkin hangs Dinner at Smith Square and Mr and Mrs E.J.P as well as a Moghul miniature, a page from the Hamzanama, Mihrdukt shoots at the ring. The catalogue includes Hodgkin’s introduction and comments and an appreciation by Alistair Smith. 165,000 people came to the show, an attendance figure “equalled only by Titian’s Portraits”, the director Michael Levey tells Hodgkin in a letter of 28 August 1979.

Visits David Hockney in Los Angeles with Peter Blake and keeps a Journal. After omelettes at the Sidewalk, (“P.B’s a Jack Kerouac, mine…a Gertrude Stein. Both revolting”), they visited Disneyland: “DH admired Pirates of the Caribbean. A plunge by boat into a dark river with treasure and cities being pillaged, a skeleton sitting in bed reading a map through a magnifying glass, a harbour full of slaves and whores all life-size, life-like and in motion…The Life of Snow White which was poor, described by PB as an early work.” Extracts were printed in Ambit 83, 1980. Hodgkin’s paintings of DH in Hollywood and prints of David’s Pool and David’s Pool at Night refer to this visit. Peter Blake evokes the trip in A Remembered Moment in Venice, California 1981–91 and the encounter with David Hockney in The Meeting or Have a Nice Day, Mr Hockney 1981-3. That also refers ironically to La rencontre, ou Bonjour M. Courbet of 1854, in which Courbet’s wealthy art patron and servant behind him salute the Assyrian-bearded artist.

Hodgkin and Peter Blake in front of Monstro, the whale that swallowed Pinocchio, at Disneyworld, in a photo taken by David Hockney, 1979