LONDON.- Maggi Hambling is one of Britain’s most significant and controversial artists. Marlborough is presenting her new series of portraits as Gallery 3’s inaugural exhibition.

Portraiture has always been a fundamental part of Hambling’s practice. The British Museum, National Portrait Gallery and Tate are among many other public collections which hold her portraits.

The works in this new series are small in scale but big in impact. Their source is the artist’s observation and imagination coupled with her relish of the sensuality and unending adventure of oil paint. Rare in contemporary art, these compassionate and incisive depictions are both economic and visceral, serious and witty, cutting to the quick of the human condition.

New Portraits coincides with The Quick and the Dead at the Jerwood Gallery, Hastings (20 October 2018 - 6 January 2019), where portraiture as dialogue and artistic exchange are at the heart of the exhibition featuring five ground-breaking artists - Maggi Hambling, Sebastian Horsley, Sarah Lucas, Julian Simmons and Juergen Teller.

Hambling (b.1945) studied with Lett Haines and Cedric Morris followed by Ipswich School of Art, Camberwell School of Art and Slade School of Fine Art. She was the first Artist in Residence at the National Gallery in 1980 and won the Jerwood Painting Prize (with Patrick Caulfield) in 1995. Solo exhibitions include British Museum (2015 / 16), Somerset House, London (2015) National Gallery, London (1981 & 2014); The State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg (2013); The Lowry, Salford, Manchester (2009); National Portrait Gallery, London (1983 & 2009); Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (2009); Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield (1997) and Serpentine Gallery, London (1987). Her work is represented in collections worldwide including: Australian National Gallery, Canberra; British Museum, London; Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon; National Gallery, London; National Portrait Gallery, London; Tate, London; Victoria and Albert Museum, London and Yale Center for British Art, New Haven.