Sir Gordon Howard Eliot Hodgkin was born into a family long connected with the arts. His art teacher at school, Wilfred Blunt, introduced him to Indian painting, which, together with the work of Henri Matisse, was an important and continued source of inspiration. Soon after the outbreak of the Second World War, Hodgkin was evacuated to America and returned to England in 1943. He spent a brief period at Camberwell School of Art in 1949, and from 1950 to 1954, he studied at the Bath Academy, Corsham, in Wiltshire. He subsequently taught at Corsham and also at the Chelsea School of Art, London. He was a Trustee of the National and Tate Galleries, and was awarded the CBE in 1977, and knighted in 1992. Hodgkin exhibited in the First India Triennale in 1968; represented Britain at the 1984 Venice Biennial; and won the Turner Prize in 1985. In 2000 he designed a mural for the new British Council building in New Delhi.
