A pioneer of the British Pop Art movement in the early 1960s alongside Richard Hamilton, David Hockney gained recognition for his semi-abstract paintings on the theme of homosexual love before it was decriminalized in England in 1967. In We Two Boys Clinging Together, 1961; red-painted couples embrace one other while floating amidst fragments from a Walt Whitman poem.

After moving to California at the end of 1963, Hockney began painting scenes of the sensual and uninhibited life of athletic young men, depicting swimming pools, palm trees, and perpetual sunshine. Experimenting with photography in the mid-1970s, Hockney went on to create his famous photocollages with Polaroids and snapshot prints arranged in a grid formation, pushing the two-dimensionality of photography to the limit, fragmenting the monocular vision of the camera and activating the viewer in the process.

A versatile artist, Hockney has produced work in almost every medium—including full-scale opera set designs, prints, and drawings using cutting-edge technology such as fax machines, laser photocopiers, computers, and even iPhones and iPads.

David Hockney

A pioneer of the 1960s British movement, David Hockney is one of the most celebrated and prolific artists of the 20th and 21st centuries.

From a small, picturesque farmhouse in the rich fields and meadows of the northern French region of Normandy, Hockney followed and recorded the changing seasons throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. For the past decade, Hockney’s medium of choice has been the iPad and it was this technological instrument, he used to spontaneously depict impressions of the Norman landscape surrounding him. The two-year project entitled “220 for 2020” documents the passage of time by portraying the first spring blossoms, the smell of summer, the saturated colours of autumn, and the stark shapes of dark branches in winter time. This poetic undertaking represented a lifeline for the artist, and offered its viewers a message of hope in unprecedented times. As part of this project, Hockney included drawings from his “La Grande Cour, Rumesnil, Normadie, 26 Juli 2019”, sketchbook. These almost autobiographical accounts started in the vicinity of the artist’s Los Angeles home and followed him along his scouting trips around Normandy. “Self-portrait in My Living Room” belongs this series of personal drawings.

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“ Do remember they can't cancel the spring „

—David Hockney