Howard Hodgkin

For Alan V

Artist's Resale Right

Lot Closed

September 25, 02:12 PM GMT

Estimate

5,000 - 7,000 GBP

Lot Details

Description

Howard Hodgkin

1932 - 2017

For Alan V

signed in pencil, dated, titled, inscribed and numbered AP 1/5

carborundum relief printed in colours from three plates, with hand-colouring on Moulin du Gué paper

sheet: 742 by 915 mm. 29⅛ by 35⅞ in.

Executed in 2014; this impression is one of five artist's proofs aside from the edition of seven, printed by Andrew's Printworks, Poole, published by Alan Cristea Gallery, London.

Alan Cristea Gallery, Howard Hodgkin Green Thoughts, London 2014, no. 18, p. 41, illustration in colour of another impression

"Whenever Howard had finished a group of prints, I would go round to his studio and he would read off the titles to me. Sometimes he would make me guess, a very nerve-racking process and the closest I ever got was in suggesting that a print that he had named 'Dawn' might be called 'Dusk'. In the case of 'Green Thoughts', the group of prints that we published in 2014 which referenced a poem by Andrew Marvell, all of the titles made sense until we got to an image of what appeared to be an unexploded bomb in a sea of blood — not at all lyrical, rustic or pastoral. This print he declared was called 'For Alan'. My first thought was that he must be referring to Alan Hollingshurst, the celebrated novelist and a friend of Howard’s but, no, it turned out to be for me. Flattered and embarrassed, I rather foolishly asked whether he thought of me as a bomb on a short fuse. He just chuckled but he must have liked the composition because he went on to make six further colour variations of the same composition."

Alan Cristea, 2017