David Hockney

Courtesy of TASCHEN

Championed for his relentless exploration of artistic media, David Hockney has challenged and transformed the conventions of picture-making through his painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, and, more recently, computer and iPad drawing. Locked down in Normandy at the beginning of COVID, Hockney used his iPad to spontaneously depict his impressions of the surrounding landscape and changing seasons. Created en plein air, the 220 iPad paintings Hockney created were compiled and co-published by TASCHEN in 2021 as a deluxe artist’s book with tipped-in illustrations. The Art Edition, with accompanying signed Hockney prints, is sold out.

'I set out to do the arrival of spring in 2020 because I hadn’t managed to do it in 2019 for various reasons, that had been my original plan. I started with the winter trees, which are needed to show how the blossom arrives with a tiny bit first and then they grow, and then the pinks come out and then the leaves, small at first and then they grow, and the blossom falls off and the pinks develop into fruit. This to my knowledge had never been done by anyone before me (not even Monet). I first attempted this in 2011 in East Yorkshire when I was living in Bridlington.

I think one of the reasons it had never been attempted before is the speed with which it happens (about three weeks after the first hints of blossom), and that oil painting out of doors requires quite a lot of equipment. The iPad, which was very new in 2011, seemed a perfect new medium. For instance, I began in February when it is still very cold in Normandy, and so I drove out in our Toyota truck looking for subjects. To oil-paint them I would have had to get out of the truck, set up a table and chair and then an easel. All this in temperatures almost freezing – the heavy coat I would have needed working every single day out there would have put most artists off. Instead the iPad was the only equipment I needed and the truck could be heated since at 83 I felt the cold. I drove all over our four-acre piece of property. I knew the trees much better than I did in 2019. I knew which was a pear tree, which was a cherry and apple and plum. I could drive very close into the trees, and draw I did. I never used photographs because they can’t show space. I made about 110 pictures in 90 days and then I thought I’d finished. I slowed down for a bit, but then I continued, realizing the summer was now here and would last for three months before the leaves would begin to change again. Then I started drawing from further away, the long shot rather than the close-up. It was still very exciting for me and I realized I should go on and do the whole year of 2020 (twenty twenty, it’s common knowledge that in the English language the battle of Hastings took place in ten sixty six 1066, so a thousand years later will be twenty sixty six 2066). In the end I made 220 paintings for 2020 and this book shows them, with another four as a bonus.

Later on in January 2021 I used quite a few of these paintings to make a very long frieze that shows the whole year in Normandy, but that is another exhibition and another book.’ – David Hockney, 9^th September 2021

Please note that the online images are for illustration purposes; the prints are not sold framed. The four prints in this lot are each edition number 23; the books are edition numbers 0023, 0123, 0223, and 0323.

The Consignor is donating 100% of the hammer price from the sale of this and other designated artworks, to be sold during Sotheby’s Contemporary Discoveries online sale held from September 23 – October 3, 2022, to Instituto Terra, a not-for-profit Brazilian organization devoted to conservation and reforestation. In addition, in relation to these designated artworks, Sotheby’s will donate 100% of its Overhead Premium to Instituto Terra and its Buyers Premium, after deducting expenses. No portion of the purchase price is tax-deductible. For more information about Instituto Terra, visit www.institutoterra.org.