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Chronology
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1970
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Exhibition at Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol, England. Several of the twelve paintings on display are portraits of Hodgkin’s artist friends. Hodgkin later described these portraits as “an attempt to make a space for myself in the context of these other painters…’ Howard Hodgkin in Conversation with Richard Cork,’ 1984
R.B.K. [a portrait of the artist RB Kitaj] is one of the first works for which Hodgkin painted in a border. Hodgkin later reveals his desire to “protect” his pictures through the creation of painted framing devices.
Serves as Trustee of the Tate Gallery, London, from 1970-6. In 1973 he advises the Board about more ‘radical’ avant-garde art, particularly conceptual art. In The Tate: A History, Frances Spalding describes Hodgkin as “one of the most influential Trustees….Hodgkin had a unique gift for either promoting or killing a potential purchase. He might merely lower his eyes and begin to doodle, but it had a devastating effect.”
Attends the posthumous Matisse exhibition at the Grand Palais in 1970. Noted later, “I didn’t really begin to experience Matisse’s work” until this event.
The influence of Vuillard becomes increasingly visible in Hodgkin’s paintings. Particularly, Hodgkin admires Vuillard’s early, Symbolist paintings from the 1890s.
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1971
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First European show with Galerie Müller in Cologne, Germany.
One-man show at Kasmin Gallery, London.
Publication of Indian Views—a set of twelve silkscreens—by Leslie Waddington Prints in London.
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1955-66
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Teaches at the Bath Academy. Lives in a flat in Shepherd’s Bush and commutes to Corsham.
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1973
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First American show at the Jill Kornblee Gallery, New York. “In many ways my career began with [the Kornblee exhibition],” Hodgkin later remarked. (The New York Times, 5 December 1993) Hodgkin has often spoken of the American reception of his painting, commenting that the United States “has none of the English embarrassment and nervousness about art.” (Zoe Heller, Harpers and Queen, April 1992)
Meets and befriends Bhupen Khakhar, a contemporary Indian artist. “To my mind he is the best Indian painter,” Hodgkin states. (in Mahendra Desai, A Man labelled Bhupen Khakhar branded as Painter, 1983, p.50)
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1975
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Exhibition of nine recent paintings at the Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol, England. The show is a turning point in Hodgkin’s career as well as a critical success.
Hodgkin later identified 1975 as the year in which he felt he was “beginning to be able to join everything up together.” David Sylvester, Howard Hodgkin: Forty Paintings: 1973-1984, The Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1984)
Becomes severely ill due to amoebic hepatitis, a parasite he had contracted eight years earlier in India.
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1976
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Appointed CBE (Commander of the British Empire).
Artist in Residence, Brasenose College, Oxford, 1976-7. In a published statement about his residency, Hodgkin writes:
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“The college provided me with a studio, a former school room in Shoe Lane… The room was chilly and rather dark in the winter, but spatially inspiring…. I have never otherwise found such perfectly difficult working conditions or such amazing company. ” (Howard Hodgkin, ‘An Artist in Residence,’ Oxford Art Journal, October 1978)
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Howard Hodgkin
Cafeteria at Grand Palais 1975
Private Collection, London
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First retrospective exhibition, Howard Hodgkin: Forty-five Paintings, 1949-1975, organised by the Arts Council of Great Britain and held at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford. The show is curated by Nicholas Serota.
Cafeteria at the Grand Palais awarded second prize in the John Moores Liverpool Exhibition X.
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1977
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Hodgkin discovers and purchases a flat in a 19th century building in the immediate vicinity of the British Museum.
Eventually he acquires the whole house and the former dairy behind, which he maintains as his studio to this day.
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1978
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Still Life in a Restaurant, 1976-79, included in Critic’s Choice, An
Exhibition of Contemporary Art Selected by John McEwen at the ICA Gallery.
During the late 1970s, Hodgkin’s domestic interiors become increasingly personal,
with numerous pictures referring to raw emotions and erotic subjects.
Studio at 42 Charterhouse Square in London.
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1978-85
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Appointed Trustee of the National Gallery, London.
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1979
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Curates exhibition The Artist’s Eye at the National Gallery, London.
Bhupen Khakhar stays with Hodgkin in Wiltshire during a six-month
teaching residence at Corsham.
With Peter Blake, Hodgkin visits David Hockney in Los Angeles and keeps a journal.
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"D and I go for a drive around town, as romantic and artificial as I had hoped and then to his studio in the Versailles Furniture Co…A smallish room with a balcony, a Matisse bergère, and many more or less finished paintings in a style which, among others, contains elements of Fauvism and Camden Town and is relentlessly bright in colour…" (Howard Hodgkin quoted in ‘Peter Blake and Howard Hodgkin in California,’ AMBIT 83, 1983)
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Hodgkin’s visits to Hockney in California inspire numerous paintings..
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1980
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Awarded second prize at the John Moores Liverpool Exhibition XII for Restaurant Still Life, 1976-79.
Completes The Moon, 1978-80. The central wooden disc in the painting is a clock Hodgkin finds discarded in the street.
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1981
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Delivers ‘How to be an artist’ as the William Townsend Memorial Lecture, given at the Slade School of Fine Art.
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“…to be an artist in England is perhaps, even certainly, special, more difficult, more traumatic and probably more fraught with the absolute certainty of failure than in any other country.” Burlington Magazine, September 1982.
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Designs scenery and costumes for Night Music, a ballet choreographed for the Ballet Rambert by Richard Alston.
Hodgkin is the subject of London Weekend Television’s South Bank Show with presenter Melvyn Bragg.
Exhibition Howard Hodgkin’s Indian Leaves at the Tate Gallery, London. Published in book form with an essay by Bruce Chatwin.
With Geeta Kapur, Hodgkin co-curates Six Indian Painters at the Tate Gallery. The artists in the exhibition include Jamini Roy and Bhupen Khakhar.
Exhibition Howard Hodgkin: Paintings at Knoedler and Co., Inc., New York, favourably reviewed.
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1983
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Begins series of Venice paintings integrating views from his travels.
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“Hodgkin’s Venice is not really a place, but rather a set of ideas, attitudes and feelings. His Venice is a place where things are seen, dimly, through veils of dense obscuring atmosphere, where objects metamorphose into barely perceptible apparitions.” (Andrew Graham-Dixon, Howard Hodgkin, Thames & Hudson, London, 1994)
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Chooses a selection of images for the exhibition Indian Drawings at the Hayward Gallery.
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1984
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Represents Britain at the XLI Venice Biennale and receives widespread praise from international critics, firmly establishing his artistic reputation.
TIME art critic Robert Hughes observes: “Not since…the Biennale 20 years ago has a show by a single painter so hogged the attention of visitors or looked so effortlessly superior to everything else on view by living artists.”’TIME, 2 July 1984)
Designs an interior for Four Rooms, an exhibition organised by the Arts Council and displayed at Liberty’s in London. The other artists involved in the project are Anthony Caro, Marc Camille Chaimowicz and Richard Hamilton
Appears on the BBC series Arena, directed by Nigel Finch and produced by Alan Yentob.
Takes a studio in Cardiff, where he works intermittently for five years.
“Howard Hodgkin and Patrick Caulfield in Conversation” published in the July-August issue of Art Monthly with a photograph of the two artists on the cover. Hodgkin later recalled that his friendship with Caulfield was ‘the closest I ever came to having a painter-colleague.” (HH quoted in Michael Glover, ‘British Masters,’ The Independent, 26 June 2004)
Completes Souvenirs, 1980-84, one of his first large-scale pictures.
Shortlisted for the Tate Gallery’s first annual Turner Prize, but the prize goes to Malcolm Morley
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1985
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Awarded 1985 Turner Prize for ‘the continuing international impact of his
painting.’ Exhibits A Small Thing But My Own, 1983-85.
Awarded an honorary Doctor of Literature degree (D. Litt) from the University of London.
The re-opened Whitechapel Gallery in London exhibits Hodgkin’s contribution to the Venice Biennale augmented by recent paintings. Concurrently, Howard Hodgkin: Prints 1977-1983 opens at the Tate Gallery, London.
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1987
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The Green Chateau, 1976-80, and Dinner at Smith Square, 1975-79, included in the survey exhibition British Art in the 20th Century at the Royal Academy, London.
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1988
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Appointed Honorary Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford.
Exhibition of thirteen recent works at Waddington Galleries, London—his first show in a London commercial gallery since 1971.
Designs a two-story mural for the swimming pool at the Broadgate Leisure Club in London, built by the Skidmore Owings & Merrill architectural firm.
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1989
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Serves on committee of the National Art Collections Fund. Eventually, Hodgkin resigns from all of his advisory board positions because, as he explains, “I came to the conclusion that I can really do my best for other people by staying in my studio, working.” The Observer Magazine, 10 July 1994
Designs sets and costumes for Royal Ballet premiere of Ashley Page’s Piano.
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