1st British International Print Biennale

David Hockney (1937 - )

offset lithograph poster print

1968

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  • About the work
    Location
    Country: UK
    City: England
    Place: Manchester, DCMS Hub
    There was an upsurge in printmaking during the 1960s and the Bradford Print Biennale showcased the creative possibilities of the medium from across the world. Hockney has been a prolific printmaker since the 1950s and was a judge at the 1968 Biennale. Born in Bradford, he visited Cartwright Hall as a child and later as a student practising drawing. Hockney moved to California in 1964 and the image here depicts a palm tree. The leaves suggest three dimensional forms in contrast to the tree trunk formed from coloured toothpaste-like stripes, which are abstract and flat in appearance. 

  • About the artist
    David Hockney is often described as ‘Britain’s most famous living artist’. Born in Bradford, he studied at the city’s school of art in the 1950s before attending the Royal College of Art in London (1959–62). There his fellow student, R. B. Kitaj, encouraged him to abandon abstraction, after which his work reflected the personal events of his own life, including a frank approach to his sexuality. Hockney visited New York in 1961 and eventually moved to Los Angeles in 1963. His first solo exhibition took place that year; followed in 1970 by his first retrospective at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London. 1988 saw the opening of a major retrospective of his work in Los Angeles that toured to New York and London. 'A Bigger Picture', an exhibition featuring over 150 of Hockney’s landscapes was held at the Royal Academy in 2012. He produced many of his drawings on an iPad and printed on paper. In 2014, 'David Hockney: A Bigger Exhibition' was shown at the De Young Museum in San Francisco. A major retrospective exhibition of his work opened at Tate Britain in 2017, before touring to Paris and New York.
  • Explore
    Places
    Bradford
    Subjects
    Materials & Techniques
    poster (as object name), lithograph, colour lithograph, offset print
  • Details
    Artist
    David Hockney (1937 - )
    Title
    1st British International Print Biennale
    Date
    1968
    Medium
    offset lithograph poster print
    Dimensions
    height: 83.2 cm; width: 64.1 cm; depth: 3.8 cm
    Acquisition
    Purchased from The Hockney Gallery, March 2021
    Provenance
    The Hockney Gallery; from whom purchased by UK Government Art Collection, 3 March 2021
    GAC number
    19010