Richard Hamilton

Richard Hamilton, Study for Re-Nude 1954 and Re-Nude Study, 1954
While studying at the Slade and then into the early 1950s, Hamilton experimented with making his own variations of the life-room subject of the nude. His repeated silhouettes reference Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase, with a hint of advertising glamour in the red lips. After 1956, Hamilton began preferring images gathered from film and magazines that were already two-dimensionalised. Photograph: The Estate of Richard Hamilton Pallant House Gallery, Chicester (Wilson loan, 2006.)

Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? 1956.

Richard Hamilton, father of British pop art, honoured in memorial exhibition

Tribute – originally planned for Hamilton's 90th birthday before his death in September – features images of him by other artists

Maev Kennedy

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 20 December 2011 19.28 GMT


Richard Hamilton, the British pop artist, captured at work on one of his collages by photographer Jorge Lewinski. Photograph: National Portrait Gallery London

An exhibition of portraits by artists and photographers honouring the artist Richard Hamilton, the father of pop art in Britain, has been assembled at the National Portrait Gallery in London.

The exhibition was originally planned to celebrate his 90th birthday next February, but Hamilton died in September, and so it has become a memorial tribute to the artist.

Hamilton's 1956 collage, Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?, is regarded as a classic example of early pop art.

The gallery has assembled 10 portraits of Hamilton by artists and photographers including David Hockney's etching from 1971 – made from life in the year both artists joined the protest against the introduction of admission charges to national museums – and Lord Snowdon's photographs from 1963.

Hamilton was born in London in 1922, studied at St Martin's and the Royal Academy – from which he was expelled for refusing to obey instructions in painting classes – and finally the Slade.

He was a member of the Independent Group, which met at the ICA in the early 1950s and was fascinated by postwar American popular culture and the new designs in advertising, packaging, fashion and cinema.

The exhibition also includes Portrait of the Artist by Francis Bacon, from the NPG permanent collection, a print inspired by a rejected photograph by Bacon, which Hamilton used to create a Bacon-like contorted image. • Richard Hamilton: Portraits of the Artist, until 14 May, NPG London; free entrance