Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld and Andy Valmorbida, in collaboration with Giorgio Armani and Phillips de Pury

Last night, Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld and Andy Valmorbida, in collaboration with Giorgio Armani and Phillips de Pury & Company, presented Richard Hambleton: A Retrospective, a survey of selected historical works from the legendary painter.

Over 2000 VIPs from the world of fashion, art and philanthropy came out to show their support last night. Notables included China Chow, Jason Wu, Bar Rafaeli, Karolina Kurkova, Alexa Chung, Jessica White and others came to celebrate.
This exhibition is the final installment of an international series curated by Roitfeld and Valmorbida in collaboration with Giorgio Armani, which has included solo shows in New York, Milan, Cannes, Moscow, and London. Richard Hambleton: A Retrospective highlightes 50 of Hambleton’s most influential works spanning from 1982 to the present, as well as twenty iconic images of the artist’s work chronicled by photographer Hank O’Neal. A new catalogue is accompanying the exhibition and features an essay by Christian Viveros-Faune.

Richard Hambleton: A Retrospective installation process

Credit: Joel Fitzpatrick Design

From his “Mass Murder” installations of the late 1970s, in which he secretly placed blood-splattered, chalk-body outlines throughout 15 cities, to his “Shadowman” series of the 1980s, where ominous, shadowy figures were painted in unexpected corners, alleys, and side streets, Richard Hambleton has permeated our collective consciousness with unforgettable images for over three decades. One of the only surviving members of a peer group that included Warhol, Basquiat, and Haring, Hambleton has been living a reclusive life in his Lower East Side studio for the past twenty years.

Despite a low public profile, Hambleton has continued to create and his works can be found in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, The Houston Museum of Fine Art, The Check Point Charlie Museum and The Zellermeyer in Berlin, the Andy Warhol Museum, the Austin Museum of Art, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Queens Museum, and Harvard University. He was chosen for the Venice Biennale in 1984.