Why is Palms so important?

Hodgkin claimed to have been inspired by the travel posters he had seen in the Paris Metro during the 1950s and 1960s, and by the coloured advertisements and commercial posters of Cassandre. For the artist, these posters had become the symbols of a certain postwar glamour and liberating spirit which he sought to evoke in his prints. Hodgkin referred to these images as “soothing, straightforward, uplifting and raising the spirits.” In particular, Street Palm held a special significance for the artist. The print was inspired by an oil painting called In Tangier, which attests to the porous exchange between painting and print fundamental to Hodgkin’s malleable technique. In Tangier, and by extension Street Palm, attempted to recreate a memory of the artist, who had gleaned upon the view of palm trees from a hotel in the Moroccan city. Once again, personal memories and recollections form the core of Hodgkin’s art, described by John McEwen as “the grit of some experience pearled by reflection. They (the paintings) begin where words fail, evocations of mood and sensation more than visual records.”

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Palms by Howard Hodgkin Background & Meaning

Palms

One of Howard Hodgkin’s more figurative bodies of work, Palms is a series of six prints produced between 1986 and 1990. Though less abstract, they retain the rich sensory quality of Hodgkin’s work: with tropical warmth captured in colour, graceful motion expressed in sweeping strokes and dappled light evoked through stippling.

Meaning & Analysis

Sir Howard Hodgkin was one of the leading figures of Post-War British art. The artist never acknowledged any affiliation to canonical art movements, preferring instead to work on the edge of styles and drawing from a variety of sources such as Fauvism, Impressionism, Pop Art and Abstract Expressionism. However, predominating his paintings and prints is the dominance of large abstract gestural brushstrokes that verge close to the works of Abstract Expressionist painters. Hodgkin famously declared to be drawn to abstraction and colour as means to convey emotional states. He claimed: “I am a representational painter, but not a painter of appearances. I paint representational pictures of emotional situations.” Sometimes, however, representation did take hold in the artist’s production, as in the case of the series of works Palms, which feature one of Hodgkin’s favourite representational motifs - the palm tree.

Palms is a series of six prints produced between 1986 and 1990. At this time Hodgkin was enjoying international notoriety and fame and was experimenting with increasingly large-scale formats. Importantly, the prints were produced after Hodgkin had been introduced by master printer Jack Shireff to carborundum printing. This technique, which characterised all of Hodgkin’s prints, allowed the artist to increase the gestural and expressive quality of the prints, adding emotional intensity through texture and embossings. In fact, the artist claimed he had been inspired to depict palms because of how easily they lent themselves to brash painterly immediacy. Additionally, as typical of Hodgkin’s printmaking practice, the prints exhibit a mixture of printed and hand-applied colours, which recur in many of his later series like As Time Goes By.

Hodgkin claimed to have been inspired by the travel posters he had seen in the Paris Metro during the 1950s and 1960s, and by the coloured advertisements and commercial posters of Cassandre. For the artist, these posters had become the symbols of a certain postwar glamour and liberating spirit which he sought to evoke in his prints. Hodgkin referred to these images as “soothing, straightforward, uplifting and raising the spirits.” In particular, Street Palm held a special significance for the artist. The print was inspired by an oil painting called In Tangier, which attests to the porous exchange between painting and print fundamental to Hodgkin’s malleable technique. In Tangier, and by extension Street Palm, attempted to recreate a memory of the artist, who had gleaned upon the view of palm trees from a hotel in the Moroccan city. Once again, personal memories and recollections form the core of Hodgkin’s art, described by John McEwen as “the grit of some experience pearled by reflection. They (the paintings) begin where words fail, evocations of mood and sensation more than visual records.”
If you're looking to sell art by Howard Hodgkin, click the link and we can help. We employ a number of techniques and practices in order to give a realistic and achievable valuation on any art listed on myartbroker.com. We analyse the demand for the work in question, take into consideration previous sales and auction valuations, we assess the current gallery valuation and monitor the current deals taking place via MyArtBroker every day. We regularly advise sellers on a price bracket for their artwork completely free of charge.