David HOCKNEY
Bradford 1937 - London 2026
Biography
Long recognized as one of the finest draughtsmen of his generation, David Hockney began drawing from a very early age and continued to do so throughout his long career. Indeed, it may be argued that drawing was always his primary medium, lying as it did at the heart of his artistic process. As he has once stated, ‘It is the most immediate thing you can do as an artist. It is direct. Drawing gives you a confidence and it opens your eyes.’
The American art critic and curator Gene Baro, in an early account of the artist’s work on paper, noted that, ‘A Hockney drawing discovers its attitudes in process of being made; such ambiguity as it may possess is all of a piece and belongs to the person and the occasion. In short, Hockney does not impose a way of seeing upon what he sees; the drawings are, in effect, dialogues, rather than monologues…The drawings in colour…are more playful – and more wasteful, however charming. Usually, they are coloured drawings and not drawings in colour. The linear forms, patterns, and graphic energies are in no inevitable relationship to the hues. Colour serves rather as a gloss upon or support of the meaning as sheer line or pattern…But even at its most arbitrary or decorative Hockney’s colour will beguile the eye.’
