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Richard Hamilton

1922–2011

Descending Nude 2006
© The estate of Richard Hamilton
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In Tate Britain

Modern and Contemporary British Art

In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Rooms

57 artworks by Richard Hamilton
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  • Artist biography
  • Wikipedia entry

Artist biography

Hamilton was born in London. He was educated at the Royal Academy Schools from 1938 to 1940, then studied engineering draughtsmanship at a Government Training Centre in 1940, then worked as a 'jig and tool' designer. He returned in 1946 to the Royal Academy Schools, from which he was expelled for 'not profiting from the instruction being given in the painting school' (Hamilton, p.10), then attended the Slade School of Art from 1948 to 1951.

An exhibition of his engravings was held at Gimpel Fils, London, in 1950. These were inspired by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson's 1913 text On Growth and Form which had been republished in 1942 and was a seminal influence on Hamilton's early work. Hamilton devised and designed the exhibitions Growth and Form at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in 1951, and Man, Machine and Motion at the Hatton Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne and the Institute of Contemporary Arts in 1955. He exhibited at the Hanover Gallery in 1955, and participated in This is Tomorrow at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1956, for which he produced a collage entitled Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? for the poster and catalogue. With Victor Pasmore in 1957 he devised and organised an Exhibit, at the Hatton Gallery and the Institute of Contemporary Arts.

Hamilton was a member of the Independent Group, formed in the 1950s by a group of artists and writers at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, whose symposiums contributed to the development of Pop art in Britain. He was one of the prime practitioners of the critic Lawrence Alloway's theory of a 'fine/pop art continuum'. Hamilton interpreted this as meaning that 'all art is equal - there was no hierarchy of value. Elvis was to one side of a long line while Picasso was strung out on the other side ... TV is neither less nor more legitimate an influence than, for example, is New York Abstract Expressionism' (Hamilton, p.31).

Hamilton taught at the London Central School of Arts and Crafts and University of Newcastle upon Tyne; he gave up teaching full-time in 1966. He designed a typographic version of Duchamp's Green Box, published in 1960, and in 1965-6, with Duchamp's guidance, reconstructed Duchamp's The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) (Tate Gallery T02011). Keen to embrace certain types of technology within his art, Hamilton began creating computer-generated works in the 1980s. He has had a long career as a print-maker, and in 1983 won the World Print Council Award. In 1991 he married the artist Rita Donagh. Retrospective exhibitions of Hamilton's work have been held at the Hanover Gallery, 1964, the Tate Gallery, 1970 and 1992, and abroad. He was Britain's representative at the 1993 Venice Biennale.

Further reading:
Richard Hamilton, Collected Words, London 1982
Richard Morphet (ed.), Richard Hamilton, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1992

Terry Riggs
December 1997

Read more

Wikipedia entry

Richard William Hamilton (24 February 1922 – 13 September 2011) was an English painter and collage artist. His 1955 exhibition Man, Machine and Motion (Hatton Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne) and his 1956 collage Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?, produced for the This Is Tomorrow exhibition of the Independent Group in London, are considered by critics and historians to be among the earliest works of pop art. A major retrospective of his work was at Tate Modern in 2014.

This biography is from Wikipedia under an Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons License. Spotted a problem? Let us know.

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Analytical cubism Independent Group British Pop

Artworks

Left Right
  • Four Self Portraits - 05.3.81

    Richard Hamilton
    1990
  • d’Orientation

    Richard Hamilton
    1952
  • People

    Richard Hamilton
    1968
  • [no title]

    Richard Hamilton
    1972
  • Dimensional data

    Richard Hamilton
    1972
  • Perspective scheme

    Richard Hamilton
    1972
  • Radial sections

    Richard Hamilton
    1972
  • Circumferential sections

    Richard Hamilton
    1972
See all 198

Artist as subject

Left Right
  • Four Self Portraits - 05.3.81

    Richard Hamilton
    1990
  • Richard Hamilton Working

    Barry Flanagan
    1972
    View by appointment
  • Richard H

    Harold Cohen
    1967
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  • Richard I

    Harold Cohen
    1967
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  • Richard II

    Harold Cohen
    1967
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  • Richard III

    Harold Cohen
    1967
    View by appointment
  • Richard IV

    Harold Cohen
    1967
    View by appointment
  • Richard V

    Harold Cohen
    1967
    View by appointment
  • Richard VI

    Harold Cohen
    1967
    View by appointment
  • Richard VII

    Harold Cohen
    1967
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  • Self-portrait

    Richard Hamilton
    1951
    View by appointment
  • Self-portrait (1965)

    Richard Hamilton
    1982
  • Palindrome

    Richard Hamilton
    1974

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  • TateShots

    Peter Saville on Richard Hamilton

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