HOWARD HODGKIN: PAINTINGS 1984 – 2015
A TRIBUTE
The CSMVS and the Jehangir Nicholson Art Foundation, Mumbai, in collaboration with Tate, London
presents
EXHIBITION DATES: 21 February 2015 -15 April 2015
EXHIBITION TIMINGS: 10:30 am – 6 pm
VENUE: Jehangir Nicholson Gallery, CSMVS, Mahatma Gandhi Road, Fort, Mumbai
This is a rare opportunity for audiences in India to see the work of the celebrated artist Howard Hodgkin on home ground. The CSMVS and the Jehangir Nicholson Art Foundation, Mumbai, have collaborated with Tate, London, to host a solo exhibition of paintings by Hodgkin, the first in India. This is Tate’s first exhibition collaboration with an Indian museum and builds on Tate’s recent focus on modern and contemporary art in India. Two major works by Howard Hodgkin are being lent from Tate’s collection: “Rain”(1984-89) and “Come into the Garden, Maud”(2000- 03). The exhibition is supported by the British Council and Gagosian Gallery.
Retrospectives of Hodgkin’s work have been shown at leading museums and arts institutions worldwide. The first retrospective was held at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford in 1976, followed by The Metropolitan Museum, New York, Tate Britain and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, besides several others. He represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1984 and reopened the Whitechapel Gallery in 1985, when he also won the Turner Prize. He was knighted in 1992, awarded the Shakespeare Prize in Hamburg in 1997 and made a Companion of Honour in 2003.
Howard Hodgkin is not only one of Britain’s most eminent artists, but a great friend of India, first visiting the country in 1964. He has since returned ‘as often as possible’ with India playing an important role in his work. Mumbai is almost a second home to Hodgkin, where he returns every year for a few months, to connect not only with friends but also with a constant source of inspiration – the Indian landscape, particularly the sea. In an interview last year with The Guardian Hodgkin said that he ‘would not have been able to produce the art he has if it were not for India: “I couldn’t work without it.”
Twenty of Hodgkin’s works will be on display in an exhibition that captures a whole range of his oeuvre from the 1980s to the present. The twelve gouaches on display were made between 1990-91 and are part of a group of thirty works recently rediscovered. Made at the 107 Workshop in England with printers Jack Shirreff and Andrew Smith whom Hodgkin worked with the pictures were forgotten, packed and stored away for almost two decades until Shirreff retired and came upon them, while emptying his workshop. In addition to the twelve gouaches and two paintings from Tate’s collection, six new paintings on wood that Hodgkin has worked on during his current visit to India, will also be shown.
