Richard Hamilton is a British artist who forever captured for posterity in original collages the era of the post-war consumer boom and hoarding.

Richard Hamilton (February 24, 1922 September 13, 2011) is a famous English artist of the second half of the 20th early 21st centuries, one of the greatest representatives of pop art. He became famous for creating original collages from ordinary materials, as well as prints and book illustrations.

Richard Hamilton was a vibrant and distinctive artist, often combining revolutionary and traditional techniques in his work, and also tried to combine achievements in the field of industrial design with the fine arts.

Biography

Richard Hamilton was born on February 24, 1922 in the British capital. The future artist did not study well at school, and at the age of fifteen he left it altogether, after which he got a job at a factory for the production of electrical appliances. At the same time, Richard became interested in drawing and began attending evening courses at the Art College of St. Martin, and in 1938, despite the lack of a secondary education certificate, the young man was accepted to study at the Royal Academy of Arts.

With the outbreak of World War II, Hamilton had to leave his studies for a while. For six years he worked as a draftsman in a government agency. Nevertheless, Richard was determined to get a diploma as a professional artist and continued his studies already at the Slade School of Fine Arts, from which he graduated in 1950.

Hamilton, while still a student, became interested in collages and installations.

Thanks to the patronage of his new acquaintances, he was appointed to the post of teacher of fine arts at the University of Newcastle. In parallel, Hamilton was engaged in the design of exhibitions at the ICA. Periodically, he lectured at seminars on contemporary art organized by Penrose.

Richard Hamilton became widely known in the mid-1950s after holding an exhibition at the prestigious Whitechapel Gallery. At this event, the young master presented to the public his work “So what makes our houses so different and attractive?”, which was later recognized as one of the greatest masterpieces of pop art of all time.

Immediately after his huge success, Hamilton became a very fashionable artist and a recognized expert in the field of contemporary art. His lectures were in great demand among students, private investors willingly provided solid research grants, and Richard’s work attracted millions of visitors to the halls of museums and studios.

Richard Hamilton has been involved in active social work.

He was a prominent member of the nuclear disarmament movement, spoke out against police brutality and misconduct, and tried to reconcile the warring parties in Northern Ireland.

Since the early 1970s, Hamilton has become widely known outside the UK, he was often invited to large-scale international exhibitions in different parts of the world. At the same time, the artist began to seriously develop print engravings and design solutions in the industrial sector. He devoted more than 50 years to creating a cycle of illustrations for the novel by the Irish writer D. Joyce “Ulysses”, which were published only at the beginning of the new millennium.

The personal life of the master was not very successful.

His first wife Terry was killed in a car accident in 1962, and the artist suffered the loss of a loved one very hard. Only in the early 1970s, he met a new love the artist Rita Donagh (Rita Donagh), who became his faithful companion until his death. Together with his second wife, soon after the wedding, he acquired an old rural farm in the south of England, where he equipped his own studio.

The authoritative master of contemporary art was engaged in creativity until old age, attended international forums, received many prestigious awards from the government and public organizations. And on September 13, 2011, Richard Hamilton died in a London hospital at the age of 89.