Why is 5 Rooms so important?

While the artist envisioned each print existing independently of the others, a common motif bringing together this portfolio of works is the recurrence of geometrical figures, which characterises all of his early prints. It is in these images that Hodgkin’s affinities to Pop Art, both in the choice of bright colours and forms, best comes to life. However, Hodgkin never adhered to a single art movement, and preferred instead to work on the edge of different practices. Alongside Pop Art, these images resurrect another art historical tradition - the representation of domestic spaces, and the presence of women in it. Drawing from sources such as Pablo Picasso’s seated femmes or Pierre Bonnard’s domestic spaces, the images explore the relationship between individuals and the spaces they inhabit. The images conjure up notions of intimacy associated to the house, but are also a reminder of the complex relationship between stereotypical gender roles and the private sphere.

How do I buy a 5 Rooms print?

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How can I sell my 5 Rooms print?

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.

5 Rooms by Howard Hodgkin Background & Meaning

Sir Howard Hodgkin is internationally recognised as one of the leading figures of Post War British art. Having trained as a painter since the age of 17, a young Hodgkin soon found in printmaking to be his medium of choice. 5 Rooms is a series of five coloured lithographs, produced between 1966 and 1968. The series bears witness to Hodgkin’s earliest attempts at printmaking, marking the start of an increasingly abstracted and vividly colourful visual language.

The artist began experimenting with the medium in 1953, when he produced his first lithograph as a 20 year old student at the Bath Academy of Art in Corsham, up until his death in 2017. Hodgkin produced small-scale monochromatic prints as well as large-scale, megalithic multi-panel prints, as displayed in his As Time Goes By series. In his formative years, Hodgkin explored lithographs and screen-prints but produced very few works compared to the abundance of prints in his later life. The year the first lithograph of 5 Rooms was produced, 1966, marked a significant turning point in his production. 5 Rooms was produced whilst the artist was teaching at the Bath Academy of Art, where he had studied up until a few years earlier. The prints were commissioned by Paul Cornwall Jones of Editions Alecto and were produced together with the printer Emil Matthieu. In them, we can glimpse the formal and thematic preoccupations that permeated Hodgkin’s earliest production and that recurred throughout his oeuvre.

While the artist envisioned each print existing independently of the others, a common motif bringing together this portfolio of works is the recurrence of geometrical figures, which characterises all of his early prints. It is in these images that Hodgkin’s affinities to Pop Art, both in the choice of bright colours and forms, best comes to life. However, Hodgkin never adhered to a single art movement, and preferred instead to work on the edge of different practices. Alongside Pop Art, these images resurrect another art historical tradition - the representation of domestic spaces, and the presence of women in it. Drawing from sources such as Pablo Picasso’s seated femmes or Pierre Bonnard’s domestic spaces, the images explore the relationship between individuals and the spaces they inhabit. The images conjure up notions of intimacy associated to the house, but are also a reminder of the complex relationship between stereotypical gender roles and the private sphere.
The prints have been the object of multiple retrospectives, most notably Alan Cristea Gallery’s 2019 Strictly Personal exhibition, where ideas of domesticity, voyeurism but also intimacy and memory were discussed for the first time in relation to Hodgkin’s oeuvre. Now, these prints constitute a powerful testimony to Hodgkin’s multifaceted practice, exhibiting the manifold of influences at play in Hodgkin’s work whether that be intentional or not.
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.