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Moonlight
Hodgkin, Howard - Enlarge image
Moonlight
- Object:
Tapestry
- Place of origin:
Great Britain, UK (made)
- Date:
1983 (made)
- Artist/Maker:
Hodgkin, Howard (Sir), born 1932 (designer)
West Dean Tapestry Studio (weaver) - Materials and Techniques:
Tapestry woven in wool
- Museum number:
T.24-1991
- Gallery location:
In Storage
The Tapestry Studio at West Dean has worked with a number of internationally renowned artists including Henry Moore, John Piper and Howard Hodgkin. Hodgkin studed at Camberwell Art School and later at the Bath Academy of Art. A painter and printmaker, he won the Turner Prize in 1985 and was knighted in 1992. Hodgkin's early paintings consisted predominately of curved forms and employed a limited colour pallet. However, the style of his later works evolved and become more spontaneous featuring abstract shapes and bright colours. His works are often compared to Henri Matisse due to their semi-abstract nature. Hodgkin has said that he paints 'representational pictures of emotional situations' and his encounters with friends are of great influence on his work.
In seeking to emphasise the idea of the painting as an object, Hodgkin often paints over the frames of his paintings and many of his works are on simple household items such as a bread board or table top. In this way, paintings which are not in frames are surrounded by rectangles of simple colour, as can be seen in Moonlight. West Dean weavers are all artists in their own right, trained to do their own dyeing. This means that translation of designs and paintings into tapestries is far more exact.
