Hockney exhibition at Royal Academy explores “A Bigger Picture”
A major new show of work by Artist David Hockney, exploring his remarkable body of cross medium work is to be mounted In January 2012 at the Royal Academy of Arts. This will be the first major exhibition in the UK to
showcase his landscape work. Vivid paintings inspired by Yorkshire, with many large in scale pieces created specifically for the exhibition, alongside related drawings and films. Through a selection of works spanning fifty years, this new body of work will be placed in the context of Hockney’s extended exploration of and fascination with landscape.
Highlights will include three groups of new work made since 2005, when Hockney returned to live in Bridlington, showing an intense observation of his surroundings in a variety of media. The exhibition will reveal the artist’s emotional engagement with the landscape he knew in his youth, as he examines on a daily basis the changes in the seasons, the cycle of growth and variations in light conditions. The exhibition will take the visitor on a journey through Hockney’s world.
The exhibition will address the various approaches that David Hockney has taken towards the depiction of landscape throughout his career. Past works from national and international collections will include Rocky Mountains and Tired Indians, 1965 (Acrylic on Canvas), Garrowby Hill, 1998, (Oil on Canvas) and the ambitious (Oil on 60 Canvases) A Closer Grand Canyon, 1998.
Hockney’s involvement with the depiction of space is traced in this exhibition from the 1960s, through his photocollages of the 1980s and the Grand Canyon paintings of the late 1990s, to the
recent paintings of East Yorkshire, many of which have been made en plein air. He has always embraced new technologies; recently he has used the iPhone and iPad as tools for making art. A
number of iPad drawings and a series of new films produced using eighteen cameras will be displayed on multiple screens, providing a spellbinding visual experience.
Born in Bradford in 1937, David Hockney attended Bradford School of Art before studying at the Royal College of Art from 1959 to 1962. Hockney’s stellar reputation was established while he was still a student; his work was featured in the exhibition Young Contemporaries, which heralded the birth of British Pop Art. He visited Los Angeles in the early 1960s and settled there soon after. He is closely associated with southern California and has produced a large body of work there over many decades. David Hockney was elected a Royal Academician in 1991.
The exhibition runs 21 January 2012 – 9 April 2012
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