Tuesday, 24 February 2025, 6pm
Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery, Ealing Green, London W5 5EQ
We are very pleased to invite members to a special private viewing of In a Public Garden, a major retrospective exhibition of Howard Hodgkin at Sir John Soane’s Pitzhanger Manor in Ealing on Tuesday, 24 February.
Hodgkin, winner of the Turner Prize, is one of Britain’s most celebrated artists. He was also a gay Old Etonian (1933). The tour will be led by the exhibition’s curator, esteemed art historian Richard Calvocoressi, who is himself an OE (1967) and father to Dragonflies’ own Tom.
In a Public Garden is a landmark exhibition of original prints by Hodgkin. It features over forty vibrant, emotionally charged prints that span five decades of Hodgkin’s career, alongside five paintings. It also includes a collection of items related to Hodgkin’s relationship with India — an interest which the artist developed under the guidance of his Eton Drawing Master, Wilfred Blunt — including photographs, works on paper, and 17th-century Mughal pottery tiles. Installed throughout Pitzhanger’s contemporary gallery and the atmospheric rooms of the historic Manor itself, this retrospective immerses visitors in Hodgkin’s world of colour, memory, and abstraction.
Richard Calvocoressi has kindly negotiated exclusive, after-hours access to the exhibition for a small group of Dragonflies.
Donations of £10 for the gallery are requested to secure attendance.