The Royal Academy To Feature A Showcase of David Hockney's Landscapes

Written by Carol Timpson Wednesday, 21 September 2011 01:04

London.- The Royal Academy of Arts is proud to present "David Hockney: A Bigger Picture", the first major exhibition in the UK to showcase David Hockney’s landscape work. Vivid paintings inspired by Yorkshire landscape, many large in scale and created specifically for the exhibition, will be shown alongside related drawings and films. Through a selection of works spanning fifty years, this new body of work will be placed in the context of Hockney’s extended exploration of and fascination with landscape. Highlights will include three groups of new work made since 2005, when Hockney returned to live in Bridlington, showing an intense observation of his  surroundings in a variety of media. The exhibition will reveal the artist’s emotional engagement with the landscape he knew in his youth, as he examines on a daily basis the changes in the seasons, the cycle of growth and variations in light conditions. "David Hockney: A Bigger Picture" will be on view in the Main galleries fro January 21st through April 9th.

The exhibition will take the visitor on a journey through Hockney’s world. The exhibition will address the various approaches that David Hockney has taken towards the depiction of landscape throughout his career. Past works from national and international collections will include "Rocky Mountains and Tired Indians", 1965 (Acrylic on Canvas), "Garrowby Hill", 1998, (Oil on Canvas) and the ambitious (Oil on 60 Canvases) "A Closer Grand Canyon", 1998. "David Hockney: A Bigger Picture" will also highlight the artist’s vast knowledge and research of the old masters and their techniques. Hockney’s involvement with the depiction of space is traced in this exhibition from the 1960s, through his photocollages of the 1980s and the Grand Canyon paintings of the late 1990s, to the recent paintings of East Yorkshire, many of which have been made en plein air. He has always embraced new technologies; recently he has used the iPhone and iPad as tools for making art. A number of iPad drawings and a series of new films produced using eighteen cameras will be displayed on multiple screens, providing a spellbinding visual experience. Born in Bradford in 1937,


David Hockney attended Bradford School of Art before studying at the Royal College of Art from 1959 to 1962. Hockney’s stellar reputation was established while he was still a student; his work was featured in the exhibition Young Contemporaries, which heralded the birth of British Pop Art. He visited Los Angeles in the early 1960s and settled there soon after. He is closely associated with southern California and has produced a large body of work there over many decades. David Hockney was elected a Royal Academician in 1991. "David Hockney: A Bigger Picture" has been organised by the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in collaboration with the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao and the Museum Ludwig, Cologne. The exhibition has been curated by the independent curator Marco Livingstone and Edith Devaney, the Royal Academy of Arts.

The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and appreciation of the visual arts through exhibitions, education and debate. The Academy was founded by George III in 1768. The 34 founding Members were a group of prominent artists and architects including Sir Joshua Reynolds and Sir William Chambers who were determined to achieve professional standing for British art and architecture. They also wanted to provide a venue for exhibitions that would be open to the public; and to establish a school of art through which their skills and knowledge could be passed to future generations of practitioners. The Academy today continues to aspire, in the words of its eighteenth-century founders, ‘to promote the arts of design’, that is: to present a broad range of visual art to the widest possible audience; to stimulate debate, understanding and creation through education; and to provide a focus for the interests of artists and art-lovers. The Academy now enjoys an unrivalled reputation as a venue for exhibitions of international importance. One of the founding principles of the RA was to 'mount an annual exhibition open to all artists of distinguished merit' to finance the training of young artists in the RA Schools. Now known as the Summer Exhibition and held every year without interruption since 1769, the exhibition attracts around 10,000 works, the selection being carried out by Academicians chaired by the President.


The RA continues to fulfil its founders’ aims by mounting a continuous programme of internationally-acclaimed loan exhibitions, supported by extensive education programmes, seminars and debates. The Main Galleries and The Sackler Wing of Galleries host a variety of major exhibitions from all periods and art forms. Recent exhibitions have been Turks: A Journey of a Thousand Years, 600 - 1600; Monet in the 20th Century; Citizens and Kings: Portraits in the Age of Revolution, 1760-1830; China: The Three Emperors, 1662-1795; From Russia: French and Russian Master Paintings 1870-1925 from Moscow and St Petersburg; Byzantium 330-1453 and The Real Van Gogh: The Artist and His Letters. The RA owns a major collection of works by Royal Academicians past and present together with the oldest and one of the best fine-art libraries in Britain. The Collection has received outstanding bequests such as the Michelangelo Tondo on display in the Sackler Wing of Galleries. Highlights from the Collection can be seen on free guided tours of the John Madejski Fine Rooms. The Academy's art school (it is known as 'The Schools' because each 'School' originally corresponded to a different element in the training of the artists that had to be mastered in a particular order) is the oldest in Britain. Past students include many famous British artists such as William Blake, JMW Turner, Edwin Landseer, JE Millais and, more recently, John Hoyland, Sir Anthony Caro and Sandra Blow. Today, 60 students study drawing, painting and printmaking on a three-year postgraduate course - the only such course currently available in Britain. Visit the academy's website at ... http://www.royalacademy.org.ukects.

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