LONDON.- The Hayward presents The Painting of Modern Life. The work of major international artists including Andy Warhol (USA), David Hockney (UK), Gerhard Richter (Germany), Martin Kippenberger (Germany), Luc Tuymans (Belgium), Richard Hamilton (UK), Marlene Dumas (South Africa), Malcolm Morley (UK), Liu Xiaodong (China), Franz Gertsch (Switzerland), Peter Doig (UK), and Elizabeth Peyton (USA) will be featured in THE PAINTING OF MODERN LIFE. The exhibition is curated by Ralph Rugoff, Director of The Hayward.

The exhibition will feature 100 paintings from the past five decades by 22 artists. Displayed thematically, the show will demonstrate the power of painting to capture and comment on recent history, at a time when photographic media has become a pervasive, even overwhelming, aspect of contemporary life.

The Painting of Modern Life is the first major museum survey to explore the use and translation of photographic imagery, one of the most influential developments in the last 50 years of contemporary painting. Beginning in the 1960s when artists such as Warhol, Richter and Richard Artschwager, began making paintings that translated photographic images taken from newspapers, advertisements, historical archives and snapshots, the exhibition will show how photography has influenced not just the content but also the technique of painting. The widespread use of monochrome by painters including Vija Celmins and Tuymans; Richter's use of a wet brush to 'blur' the painting; the meticulous reproduction of a flash-bulb light on the flattened surface of Gertsch's paintings; and the snapshot-like white borders framing the works of Hamilton and Morley, all deliberately alluded to photography.

List of artists: Richard Artschwager, Robert Bechtle, Vija Celmins, Peter Doig, Marlene Dumas, Thomas Eggerer, Judith Eisler, Franz Gertsch, Richard Hamilton, Eberhard Havekost, David Hockney, Johannes Kahrs, Johanna Kandl, Martin Kippenberger, Liu Xiaodong, Malcolm Morley, Elizabeth Peyton, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Gerhard Richter, Wilhelm Sasnal, Luc Tuymans, Andy Warhol.