Venice, Evening

Location

Country: Singapore
City: Singapore
Place: British High Commission

One of a set of four Venetian Views by Howard Hodgkin, this print evolved from a project to illustrate Thomas Mann’s 1912 novel, Death in Venice. Hodgkin chose to focus on fragments, like the ‘crumbling fragments of Venice’. When assembled, the individual images formed a large print that could exist independently of the book. Although the book illustration project fell through in 1993, Hodgkin remained keen to create a series of Venetian prints. Hodgkin remarked:‘I like the slightness of the medium to show as much as possible… and I want them to be as spontaneous and open and emotional as they can be – partly because my paintings are so much the opposite’.Sir Gordon Howard Eliot Hodgkin CH CBE was a British painter and printmaker. In 1984 he represented Britain at the Venice Biennale with the exhibition Forty Paintings 1973–84, which subsequently toured to America, Germany and Britain, and in 1992 he was awarded a Knighthood.

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.

Places

Subjects

Materials & Techniques

Artist

Sir Howard Hodgkin (1932 - 2017)

Title

Venice, Evening

Edition

57/60

Date

1995

Medium

Hand-coloured etching and aquatint with carborundum

Dimensions

height: 158.50 cm, width: 195.50 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from Alan Cristea Gallery, February 1997

Provenance

Alan Cristea

GAC number

17253