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Indepth Arts News:
"Drawings, Lithographs and Limited Edition Signed prints by David Hockney"
2006-09-28 until 2006-10-28
Andipa Gallery
London, ,
UK United Kingdom
Some 50 drawings, lithographs and limited edition signed prints by David Hockney, priced between £1,500 and £60,000, will be for sale at Andipa Gallery this autumn. The highlight of the show is a very rare preparatory drawing, believed to have been sketched at Tyler Graphics’ studios in New York. ‘Swimming Pool’, 1978, brown ink on paper, depicts a Californian swimming pool and diving board, showing the play of the shadow on the water and with an instruction to blend the colour of the unseen background into the wavy lines of the pool’s water. Andipa Gallery offers this work for sale at £60,000.
Famed for his swimming pool paintings inspired by his visits to the west coast of America in the early sixties, Hockney began experimenting with prints, having had some printing experience when at art school in England. A visit to meet Ellsworth Kelly and Kenneth Noland at Tyler Graphics’ paper pulp works in New York enthused Hockney to the point that he began his own paper pulp prints, returning to the subject of the pool and printing twenty-nine Paper Pools during a 49 day stretch, working 16 hours a day. The diving board dramatically breaks the surface of the intensely blue water, which varies from turquoise to deep royal blue, sometimes just shown as a wash. The shadow of the board is sometimes geometrically cast against the side of the pool, however in Paper Pool, 1980, it drapes like a curtain, mimicking the wavy lines breaking the surface of the water – price £6,500.
In February 1984, when travelling in Mexico, Hockney had an unexpected stay at the Hotel Romano Angeles in Acatlán, as a result of his car breaking down. Happily, the outcome was a series of bold and richly colourful works on his return to Los Angeles, when he once again worked with Kenneth Tyler resulting in the sought after prints. ‘Hotel Acatlan: First Day’, 1984-85, depicts the striking rich brown roof rafters and hot rust coloured floor, which lead your eye out through strutting uprights to the lush green vegetation and trees in the garden. Two shadowy chairs blend into the foreground where Hockney may well have sat and admired the scenery. A printer’s proof lithograph, printed in colour on two sheets of white paper, is priced at £40,000.
These are a direct contrast to Hockney’s earlier portfolio of Grimms’ Fairy Tales of monochromatic etchings and aquatint, from the late sixties. ‘Home’, 1969, (numbered 11 of 100), depicts a chair, a subject featured in several of his works, £6,500, (see ‘Van Gogh’s Chair’, 1998, edition 14 of 35, selling for £20,000).
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