Sir Howard Hodgkin CBE was an English abstract painter and printmaker. Born in 1932 in London, Hodgkin was educated at the Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts and later at the Bath Academy of Art in Corsham. His paintings are generally small in scale, consciously conceived within the tradition of European easel painting. Hodgkin was always concerned to make the picture an object, and from 1970 he worked not on canvas but on assertive wooden supports, such as drawing boards or door frames. His paintings are characterized by their bright colours and semi-abstract bold forms.
In 1984, Hodgkin represented Britain at the Venice Biennale, in 1985 he won the Turner Prize, and in 1992 he was knighted. His work has been exhibited worldwide, including retrospectives at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and more recently at the Tate Gallery in London, the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, and the Reina Sofia in Madrid. His work can be found in the collections of most major museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York; Tate in London; the Met; the British Museum in London; and the Carnegie Institute in Pennsylvania.