Fashion Plate by Richard Hamilton, b.1922

Richard Hamilton, b.1922
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Fashion Plate

Original lithograph with collage, screenprint and pochoir with retouching on the stone with cosmetics. 1969/70.
Signed in pencil. Numbered (3) in pencil from the edition of 20. Printed in part at the studio of Sergio and Fausta
Tosi, Milan, then retouched by the artist and completed at Kelpra studio, London. Published by Petersburg Press,
London 1970.
Ref: Waddington - Hamilton Prints no 74

Excellent impresdsion with very fresh colour and collage. On pale cream wove paper. Generally excellent condition; slight traces of old mounting and two glass nicks in the outer margins. Full sheet: 39 x 27 1/4ins. Image: 31 1/2 x 24ins (800x610mm).

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Richard Hamilton was one of the major founders of the Pop Art movement in British Art in the mid 1950's. A key moment in establishing this movement was the 'This is tomorrow' exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1956. In the early 1960's, through his association with Marcel Duchamp, Hamilton was in New York and met Warhol and Lichtenstein, and then organised the Duchamp exhibition at the Tate Gallery in 1966, two years before Duchamp's death. During the 1970's he continued to advance the avant-garde of British art in solo exhibitions and in linked shows, such as with Dieter Roth in 1976.

Hamilton played an extremely influential role in British Pop Art not least through his prints. He was especially interested in printmaking techniques from the earliest period of his art, often combining differing techniques within a single work. His imagery was figurative, combining highly representational forms, often very detailed in their depiction, with a deliberately unexpected handling of form or composition. He also used famous images from the art of the past as a basis for a totally new reinterpretation.

'Fashion Plate' is an outstanding example of the invention and pictorial influence of Hamilton's finest prints. It is worked in an extremely inventive, and very complex combination of a collage of a fashion magazine photograph of Sophia Loren, broken up into separate parts, then screenprinted over the top, and retouched by hand using cosmetics. The printing involved some work in Milan an then finishing on each impression in London. It sums up the height of his Pop Art imagery, with the choice of the elements of the printing deliberately used to heighten its Pop quality, and it is very uncommon to find it in good condition.