MellerMerceux.com

Marrying spontaneity with serenity, expression and compositional harmony, the art of Howard Hodgkin possesses one of the most immediately identifiable styles in the field of abstract art. Unlike many of his contemporaries who, like him, were associated with the famous School of London in the 1970s, Hodgkin avoids figurative subject matter in the majority of his paintings. His extensive, painterly brushstrokes celebrate the material qualities of paint and the physical action of manipulating it across a canvas. These characteristics associate Hodgkin with the abstract expressionism of such figures as Pollock and de Kooning, but the titles of Hodgkin’s paintings reveal a different reality. Designations such as In Raimund Stecker’s Garden alert one to the fact that Hodgkin’s paintings are reflections of the moods and sensations which arise from his encounters with friends and loved ones. Hodgkin himself has cast doubt on the idea of a truly abstract art, saying his paintings are rather “representational pictures of emotional situations”. As documents of sensation, energised by a profound sensitivity to energies generated by certain colour combinations, his works can be compared to those of artistic forebears such as J.M.W. Turner and Henri Matisse, for whom Hodgkin has stated his particular admiration. The 1985 Turner Prize winner was knighted in 1995, signalling his status as one of Britain’s most important and influential living painters. Hodgkin studied at Brasenose College, opposite Meller Merceux’s Oxford gallery.