David Hockney

DAVID HOCKNEY (United Kingdom, 1937).
"My window".
Publisher Taschen.
Hardcover. With slipcase.
Edition of 1000 copies.
Numbered copy.
Signed by the artist.
Measurements: 50 x 38,5 cm.

In 120 drawings for iPhone and iPad, Hockney records his perceptions of the world from the window of his Yorkshire home. Each image represents a fleeting moment; taken together, they paint the passage of time through the artist's eyes. When David Hockney discovered the iPhone as an artistic medium, it opened up entirely new possibilities for his art. He made his first digital drawings in the spring of 2009, depicting the morning landscape with broad lines and dazzling colors directly on a screen that offered subtle nuances as unblended expressions of pure light. Later, in 2010, Hockney began working with an iPad, and the larger screen expanded his artistic repertoire and allowed for an even more complex interplay of color, light and line.

Hockney was born in Bradford, England, (d), and was educated at Wellington Primary School, Bradford Grammar School, Bradford School of Art, where one of his most influential teachers was Frank Lisleand and his fellow artists included Norman Stevens, David Oxtoby and John Loker. He also studied for a season at the Royal College of Art in London, where he met RB Kitaj. While there, Hockney said he felt at home and took pride in his work. At the Royal College of Art, Hockney participated in the Young Contemporaries exhibition, along with Peter Blake, which became a milestone in heralding the arrival of British Pop Art. Hockney became associated with the movement, but his early works show expressionist elements, similar to some works by Francis Bacon. The artist moved to Los Angeles in 1964, where he was inspired to begin making a series of pool paintings in a relatively new acrylic medium with vibrant colors. The artist lived between Los Angeles, London and Paris in the late 1960s and 1970s. In 1974 he began a decade-long personal relationship with Gregory Evans, who moved with him to the United States in 1976 and as of 2018 remains a business partner. In 1978, he rented a house in the Hollywood Hills, then bought and expanded it to include his studio. Hockney has openly explored the nature of gay love in his portraiture. Sometimes, as in We Two Boys Together Clinging (1961), named after a Walt Whitman poem. In 1963, he painted two men together in the painting Domestic Scene, Los Angeles, one bathing while the other washes his back. In the summer of 1966, while teaching at UCLA, he met Peter Schlesinger, an art student who posed for paintings and drawings, and with whom he became romantically involved. Hockney has experimented with painting, drawing, printmaking, watercolor, photography, and many other media, including the fax machine, paper pulp, and computer and iPad drawing programs. Subject matter ranges from still life to landscapes, portraits of friends, his dogs and set designs for the Royal Court Theatre, Glyndebourne and the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. Today his work is distributed among large and important private collections and the most important art museums in the world. Here in Spain his portraits could be seen in the Guggenheim's traveling exhibition in 2018.