Richard Hamilton

Richard Hamilton had his own mind as an artist from early on

Richard Hamilton was born on 24 February 1922 in London. He was passionate about the fine arts as a teenager, took evening course in drawing, and studied painting from 1938 at the Royal Academy of Arts. He also learnt technical drawing and was able to earn and living as well as pay for further painting lessons with this ability. Following a disagreement with his teacher because he refused to follow their instructions, he was forced to leave the academy and moved to the Slade School of Fine Art in London. He took his first steps as an independent artist during his studies at the end of the 1940s with drawings inspired by James Joyce’s great literary classic, Ulysses, whilst Marcel Duchamp was just one artist who also greatly influenced his early work. Hamilton presented these first works in London at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, where the Scottish sculptor and graphic artist Eduardo Paolozzi also exhibited his early pieces.

With a small collage begins a great art movement

In 19556, Richard Hamilton presented his first collage work, which although comparatively small and modest, many art historians today regard it as the beginning of British Pop Art: The picture Just What Is It That Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing? shows a naked couple, their modesty partly covered by newspaper cuttings. There is nothing spectacular about the pictures, it almost seems rough and unfinished, much too restless and cluttered to be great art, with the air of an early attempt that points to an artist not yet fully matured. Nevertheless, this unassuming collage would become an icon, the catalyst of a storm, an artistic revolution that was to sweep away the established norms and traditions of the artworld in the years that followed. It was the beginning of a great career for Richard Hamilton, the first step of the age of Pop Art, whose trail would be followed by greats such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. Although the later artists attracted much more attention than Hamilton, his role as the pioneer of Pop Art is undisputed among experts.

Richard Hamilton, a political artist

Richard Hamilton used the imagery of the advertising industry and drew a great deal of inspiration from consumerism, but he was by no means uncritical of it. Quite the opposite: influenced by Marcel Duchamp’s ready-mades, he elevated industrial design to that of an art form but was also blatantly critical of capitalism and took a rather left-wing political stance – an aspect of Hamilton’s creativity that was particularly prominent in the artist’s later years. He depicted the arrest of his friend Mick Jagger in 1967 in his painting Swingeing London 67, and highly political themes such as the Ireland conflict and the Iraq War also found their way into his work. 

Richard Hamilton died on 13 September 2011 in his birth and hometown of London.