Howard Hodgkin

As a painter, Hodgkin has mostly preferred to create small works using oils and working on wood. As a printmaker, he has challenged the format, techniques and expressive potential of the medium. He began in 1953 and has now made over 140 works on paper. Far from seeing them as poor relations to his paintings, he has consistently explored the print medium for its own sake, making astonishingly varied, emotive and persuasive works that are paradoxically unique as well as multiples. While he favours gestural mark-making, he chooses to work at one remove, giving his assistants detailed instructions, using metaphors such as to handle the material 'like a silk stocking'.

An interview with Hodgkin sheds light on the genesis of the prints and investigates his conviction that printmaking is an independent process.

With over eighty colour plates and a fully illustrated catalogue raisonné, plus a chronology, an extensive bibliography and a list of solo and group exhibitions, this is the definitive celebration of the most popular area of this artist's work.