This exhibition traces the evolution of Howard Hodgkin’s work over six decades, from the early portraits and interiors of the 1950s and 1960s, to his use of the wooden panel and painted frame in the 1970s, through to his more gestural paintings since the 1980s.

Hodgkin describes his work as ‘representational pictures of emotional situations’. Working from memory, he both reveals and obscures his subjects by layering the picture surface with bold colours and distinctive marks, often over a period of several years. Neither wholly abstract nor figurative, his paintings attempt to recreate the intensity of experience.

Hodgkin completed Memoirs 1949 when he was sixteen, while a student at Camberwell School of Art, and considers the painting his first mature work. Displayed by the entrance to the exhibition, its vivid colours, flattened perspective and equal treatment of figure and object anticipate many of the themes and techniques that Hodgkin developed and refined in later work. Memoirs portrays a social exchange long after the moment has occurred and introduces the artist’s enduring preoccupation with translating the act of remembering into paint.

View of Room 5 of this exhibition © Tate 2006

View of Room 11 of this exhibition © Tate 2006