Details — Click to read
Soft-ground etching on buff BFK Rives mould-made paper. Signed by the artist, numbered, and dated 79 lower center in red crayon. Printed from the same plate as Early Evening in the Museum of Modern Art.
This print depicts an abstracted scene, perhaps a sculpture in front of a window in the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in Hodgkin’s signature painterly style. The expressive mark-making in this print is an example of the artist’s movement in the late 70s towards pronounced gestures. Hodgkin used his hand as a mark-making tool, combining these textures with loose and urgent brushwork.
Howard Hodgkin was introduced to the etching technique used in Late Afternoon in the Museum of Modern Art at Petersburg Press, where this print was produced and where he would become a long-time collaborator. This technique allowed him to work fluidly and spontaneously, creating the moody interior scenes that mark Hodgkin’s work from the late 70s and early 80s.
Part of a series of four prints set in the Museum of Modern Art, New York (Late Afternoon, Early Evening, Thinking Aloud, and All Alone in the Museum of Modern Art). At earlier stages, these four prints were called by other titles: ‘Alone in the Museum of Modern Art’, ‘Not Quite Alone in the Museum of Modern Art’, “Inside the Museum of Modern Art’, ‘Talking about Modern Art’, and ‘Shadows in the Museum of Modern Art.’
Copies of this print are in the collections of Tate, London; and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
