Howard Hodgkin: Absent Friends at the National Portrait Gallery, London, is the first exhibition of portraits by one of Britain’s greatest artists. Hodgkin’s paintings are characterised by rich colour, complex illusionistic space and sensuous brushwork. By emphasising these pictorial elements, his work frequently appears entirely abstract. However, over the course of 65 years, a principal concern of Hodgkin’s art has been to evoke a human presence.
The role of memory, the expression of emotion, and the exploration of relationships between people and places are all preoccupations. The exhibition explores Hodgkin’s development of a personal visual language of portraiture, which challenges traditional forms of representation.
In this video tour of the exhibition, curator Paul Moorhouse explains how, as Hodgkin evolved as an artist, he increasingly abstracted what people meant to him, representing people in his pictures through memories, evocations, and feelings.
Find out more about the exhibition and book tickets at www.npg.org.uk/hodgkin
Directed by Miriam Perez/Gagosian; Produced by PerryDuke.