Howard Hodgkin
Alexander Street, 1978
Lithograph from three zinc plates printed in emerald green, red brown and grey with hand colouring in yellow watercolour and red gouache
In addition to being one of Britain's most acclaimed painters, Howard Hodgkin was also a devoted printmaker. Over the course of fifty years he produced over one hundred separate editions using the full spectrum of print techniques.
His images were largely abstract, though not entirely so. In his own words, he was “...a representational painter, but not a painter of appearances. I paint representational pictures of emotional situations.” Prints such as 'Alexander Street' relate specifically to memory, referencing people, places and moments from the artist's life.
Although Hodgkin's paintings and prints may seem spontaneous they were usually the result of a long, solitary process of layering and overpainting. He embraced the process of hand-colouring in his prints, fusing the separate spheres of painting and printmaking so that each edition was subtly different from the others and more like a standalone piece of work.
In this image the areas of red and yellow have been brushed onto the lithographic base by hand. The water-bound pigments were allowed to pool and bead unpredictably on top of the oil-based printing ink. This particular impression features a rich and lively surface, with the red gouache having settled particularly nicely.
'Alexander Street' is a terrific example of what can be considered the middle phase of Hodgkin's career as a printmaker, set between the crisp, graphic works of the late 60s to early 70s, and the almost sculptural carborundum etchings that he began to produce in 1986.
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