David Hockney at Tate Britain: 9 February – 29 May 2017

David Hockney Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) 1972 Private Collection © David Hockney


Born in Bradford in July 1937 the fourth of five children, Hockney remains one of the most popular and influential British artists of the 20th century.  One of the founders of the British pop art movement of the 1960s, in 1964 he moved to California, returned to London in 1968, and from 1973 to 1975 lived in Paris.  He returned to Los Angeles in 1978 where he has lived off and on for over 30 years.  Hockney returned more frequently to Yorkshire in the 1990s and from 2005, working from his studio in the seaside town of Bridlington, painted landscapes, influenced by his intensive studies in watercolour, including vast paintings made of multiple smaller canvases placed together, scaled using digital photographic reproductions.  Most famous, and his largest painting, is  Bigger Trees Near Warter, 2007, (15 x 40 ft.), “a monumental-scale view of a coppice between Bridlington and York. It was painted on 50 individual canvases, mostly working in situ, over five weeks in the winter. 

From his portraits and images of Los Angeles’ swimming pools (acrylic paint, applied in smooth brilliant colours), through to his drawings and photography, Yorkshire landscapes and most recent paintings. this exhibition draws together an extensive selection of Hockney’s most famous works in painting, drawing, print, photography and video across six decades.

A Bigger Splash, 1967, Tate Collection, London

 David Hockney at Tate Britain: 9 February – 29 May 2017.  Click here for further details.