Following David Hockney’s celebrated exhibition at Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris last summer, this show highlights “The Moon Room”, comprising 15 iPad paintings of the night sky and is an hommage to the recently deceased master of landscape painting.

The moon works were created in 2020 outside Hockney’s Normandy studio in France throughout the seasons and, just as previous iPad works have, these works capture a joy in nature, this time brightly illuminated by moonlight.  

Influences of Van Gogh are present, yet Hockney’s signature use of line and colour is unmistakable.  With the ability to paint easily en plein air, Hockney enjoys the speed with which he can capture light with the iPad, evident in the luminosity of these works. 

Hockney said: “Once, when we were just sitting outside the house, we put all the lights off in the house to see the moonlight more clearly. The moon could then be seen to cast shadows of the trees on the grass, so with my backlit iPad I could draw it. This would have been virtually impossible without it.”

David Hockney became known as a central figure of British art in the 1960s and continues to be widely celebrated as one of the most influential artists of our time.  Born in Bradford in 1937, he graduated from the Bradford School of Art in 1957 and studied at the Royal College of Art from 1959–62.  

Alongside his prodigious painting and drawing practice, he has constantly explored new technological possibilities in making art.  In the 1980s he embraced Polaroid film, photocopying and faxing and, more recently, digital media including photoshop and his iPad as new means of conceiving and creating mesmerising multiple-view and composite images.  

DAVID HOCKNEY
PACE GALLERY
NEW YORK, USA
https://www.pacegallery.com

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