David Hockney: Prints

David Hockney has been an important figure on the international art scene for half a century, and he has been among the most experimental in terms of embracing new art forms and technologies. While his recent show in Melbourne focused solely on his iPad drawings, the NGA’s upcoming exhibition David Hockney: prints, in Canberra from 10 November, will explore the broader history of his printmaking practice through key works from our extensive collection, one of the largest in the world. This free exhibition will illuminate his great experiments in printmaking over the decades, which have expanded the possibilities of the medium as we understand it today.

Since 1954, making prints has been an integral part of his art practice and he has excelled in the field. During a period that has witnessed a revival in this art form, Hockney has created a significant body of work. Through constant experimentation and innovation he has pushed the boundaries of printmaking in terms of style, subject matter, technique and scale, giving him a different point of view in his art practice.

As a mature artist Hockney achieved a fusion of the abstract and formal elements in his work to tackle age-old issues—how to portray someone, how to depict a landscape and season, time of day and weather conditions, and how to indicate space and time in two-dimensional art forms. For Hockney, printmaking has been an integral part of this search and discovery.

Hockney’s initial chosen methods of lithography and then etching, so suitable for an artist whose prime focus was on drawing, beguiled him from the very beginning as he honed his skill as a gifted draughtsman. As an artist he has always been fascinated with various ways of making art, and in printmaking he experimented with ‘homemade prints’, using photocopies and faxes, as well as computer drawings as a precursor to his current iPhone and iPad compositions.