Notes

A Seated Figure, Red Room was the key painting in Robert Hodgins’s last solo exhibition at Goodman Gallery Cape in 2008. Hodgins himself regarded this work as a breakthrough and declared it the most significant work in the entire exhibition, confiding to the author that this was the direction in which he saw his future work going.

The format is bisected horizontally with a bold red dominating the top third of the painting from which fluid bleeds into the translucent pink ground of the lower two thirds. The red chair that imprisons the figure in the centre of this empty field casts ominous shadows, echoing Francis Bacon’s figures under scrutiny. The stark lamp is reminiscent of that in Picasso’s Guernica, suggesting that this figure in extremis could be a prisoner of war and evoking media imagery of the abuses perpetrated in detention centres.

This seminal work with its harrowing image signalled a new direction that Hodgins wished to pursue, forsaking his more light-hearted paintings for the harsh socio-political commentaries of earlier works. The Cape Times, Wednesday, 17 March, 2010, illustrated in full colour, article published upon Hodgin's death.

Exhibited

Goodman Gallery Cape, Cape Town.

Literature

The Cape Times, Wednesday, 17 March, 2010, illustrated in full colour, article published upon Hodgin's death.