From 21 January to 9 April 2012, the Royal Academy of Arts will showcase, in partnership with BNP Paribas,the first major exhibition of new landscape works by David Hockney RA. Featuring vivid paintings inspired by the East Yorkshire countryside, these large-scale works have been created especially for the galleries at the Royal Academy of Arts and will be shown alongside related drawings and film. The exhibition will also reveal how Hockney has embraced new technology, including his early use of the Polaroid camera, his innovative use of the colour photocopier, and more recently his iPhone and iPad.
About David Hockney
Born in Bradford, England, David Hockney became famous in the early 1960s and one of the leaders of the pop art movement in the United Kingdom.
After emigrating to the United States in 1964, Hockney was known for his “swimming pool” paintings, then for his elaborate stage sets during the ’70s and for his photo collages during the ’80s. His easel paintings made during the 1980s show the influence that Matisse and Picasso exerted over his art.
In the last decade, Hockney has returned to painting in the open air, observing with honesty and intensity the scenery remembered from school holidays spent in East Yorkshire. He is now widely recognised as Britain’s greatest living artist.
About the Exhibition
Created especially for the exhibition, vivid, large-scale paintings inspired by the Yorkshire countryside will be displayed next to drawings by the celebrated English painter. Alongside a selection of works spanning more than fifty years, these new pieces will shed new light on Hockney’s fascination with landscapes.
The exhibition will also present a number of his works painted from the Fifties onwards. These include the photo-collages of the Eighties and Grand Canyon paintings of the late Nineties, which put the Yorkshire works in context and highlight the striking relationship between past works and his current thinking and practice.
The exhibition will include a display of his iPad drawings and a series of new films produced using 18 cameras, which will be displayed on multiple screens and which will provide a spellbinding visual journey through the eyes of David Hockney.
Designed by the curators Marco Livingstone and Édith Devaney, the exhibition “David Hockney: A Bigger Picture” was organised by the Royal Academy of Arts in London, in collaboration with the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and the Ludwig Museum in Cologne.
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The exhibition has proved to be a huge success so far, and has generated a vast amount of publicity. Plus, advanced ticket sales to the exhibition are the highest the Royal Academy has seen in its history, with an average of 5,000 people per day enjoying the Hockney experience!