David Hockney at Tate Britain: Biggest-ever retrospective of artist's work
- Published
More than 250 works by the Bradford-born artist will be on display, many of which have been in private collections and not on public display for decades, showing his development from an art student in the 1960s to the present day. Among the famous paintings on show is A Bigger Splash - the 1967 artwork inspired the title of the recent film starring Ralph Fiennes and Tilda Swinton.
Water - and swimming pools in particular - is a theme that Hockney has returned to countless times, including in Gregory Swimming, Los Angeles, March 31st 1982. Hockney first moved to Los Angeles in the 1960s and has lived there on and off ever since.
The Yorkshireman is also known for his multi-panel paintings depicting the countryside of his home county, which he turned to in the 2000s. A Closer Winter Tunnel was completed in Spring 2006.
Hockney, 79, has said of the exhibition: "It has been a pleasure to revisit works I made decades ago, including some of my earliest paintings. Many of them seem like old friends to me now." A visitor is shown here with 1963 work, A Play Within a Play.
The artist added: "We're looking back over a lifetime with the exhibition and I hope, like me, people will enjoy seeing how the roots of the new and recent work can be seen in developments over the years." Gregory Evans, a former partner of Hockney, is captured in Model with Unfinished Self-Portrait, 1977.
Some of Hockney's most recent portraiture has been created on his new tool - the iPad. He has embraced the modern medium, and the iPhone, in recent years, creating videos and stills with it since 2008. His distinct style is obvious in the works, despite the difference in technique.
His 1970s works include Contrejour in the French Style 1974, left, and Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy. That work is a portrait of fashion designer Ossie Clark and his wife, fabric designer Celia Birtwell - as well as their cat Percy, of course - at their Notting Hill home in the early 1970s. It is one of Hockney's best-loved pieces.
Many of Hockney's works use vibrant colours, like Pacific Coast Highway and Santa Monica, a 1990 work. Chris Stephens, the Tate's lead curator in modern British art, told the BBC that Hockney has "an amazing imagination and love of life" and that his paintings are "brilliantly-coloured and affirmative".
Visitors to the exhibition - one of the largest ever staged at Tate Britain - will also be brought bang up to date with Hockney's video installations of Yorkshire, mirroring the panel paintings showing similar views.
"Hockney is a force of nature," said exhibition curator Andrew Wilson. "As an artist, he arouses great feelings and I think it is going to be very, very important for us to have opened the doors to such amazing work for people to see." It is the first large retrospective of Hockney in the UK since 1988. This artwork, Canvas Study of the Grand Canyon, dates from 10 years later.
Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy, 1968, is seen here alongside one of Hockney's most recent works - a new masthead for the Sun, which was published last week as a one-off edition. The painting of the novelist and artist has not been displayed for more than two decades. Mr Wilson said it was "staggeringly different" to see works in person. "The chance to have those experiences is going to change how people understand David Hockney's work," he added. David Hockney is at the Tate Britain from 9 February to 29 May.
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