Painter Maggi Hambling opens exhibition of lockdown works
The Suffolk-born artist posed with a cigarette during the press viewing.
Painter Maggi Hambling has unveiled a collection of new works marking her 75th birthday later this month.
The exhibition at Marlborough Gallery in London, titled 2020, features a series of self-portraits, painted during lockdown, as well as pictures of imperilled animals.
Hambling, who celebrates the milestone on October 23, poses with her pieces while smoking a cigarette in photos from the press viewing.
The lockdown of spring 2020 gave rise to Self-Portrait, (Angry) an abstract image painted with oil on canvas.
In Self-Portrait, Working, Hambling is seen as if from the point of view of the canvas, as a faint grey silhouette.
Elephant Without Tusk, Lion In Enclosure and Young Dancing Bear show animals in danger, echoing her previous work highlighting humanity’s effect on the natural world.
Hambling’s Edge series of 2017 depicted dissolving polar icecaps.
Born in Suffolk in 1945, Hambling has worked across painting, sculpture, printmaking and installation.
In 2017, the British Museum hosted a retrospective of her work on paper, and a major retrospective exhibition of her work across all media was held in China in 2019.
Maggi Hambling: 2020 runs at Marlborough Gallery in London between October 15 and November 21.
This autumn will see the artist unveil a public sculpture for feminist writer and advocate Mary Wollstonecraft in Newington Green, London.
