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Lot 35
David Hockney (b. 1937)
Los Angeles
Closed17 February 2012
Price Realised
GBP 121,250
More Information
Specialist note
Hockney visited Los Angeles for the first time in 1963, and was entranced by the city.
'I remember flying in on an afternoon, and as we flew in over Los Angeles I looked down to see blue swimming pools all over, and I realized that a swimming pool in England would have been a luxury, whereas here they are not, because of the climate' (Christopher Simon Sykes, Hockney: The Biography, Century, London, p. 142).
With its bright sunshine, modernist homes, ubiquitous lawns and swimming pools, this suburban landscape represented an idyllic way of life for Hockney, worlds away from Bradford and London.
In 1966 he returned to the city for a year, taking a studio on Pico Boulevard where he produced some of his iconic works, including A Bigger Splash and Beverly Hills Housewife. It marked a turning point for him stylistically. He later recalled:
'The one thing that happened in Los Angeles was that I had begun to paint real things I had seen; all the paintings before that were either ideas or things I'd seen in a book and made something from. In Los Angeles I actually began to paint the city round me, as I'd never - still haven't - done in London.' (David Hockney by David Hockney, Thames and Hudson, London, 1976, p. 104).
In this drawing, titled simply Los Angeles, Hockney reduces this very typical suburban vista to its very essence. Planes of pink and green, punctuated only by the prickly irregularity of a box hedge, suggest warm sunshine on a suburban wall in a sea of lawn, against the backdrop of a cloudless sky.
'I remember flying in on an afternoon, and as we flew in over Los Angeles I looked down to see blue swimming pools all over, and I realized that a swimming pool in England would have been a luxury, whereas here they are not, because of the climate' (Christopher Simon Sykes, Hockney: The Biography, Century, London, p. 142).
With its bright sunshine, modernist homes, ubiquitous lawns and swimming pools, this suburban landscape represented an idyllic way of life for Hockney, worlds away from Bradford and London.
In 1966 he returned to the city for a year, taking a studio on Pico Boulevard where he produced some of his iconic works, including A Bigger Splash and Beverly Hills Housewife. It marked a turning point for him stylistically. He later recalled:
'The one thing that happened in Los Angeles was that I had begun to paint real things I had seen; all the paintings before that were either ideas or things I'd seen in a book and made something from. In Los Angeles I actually began to paint the city round me, as I'd never - still haven't - done in London.' (David Hockney by David Hockney, Thames and Hudson, London, 1976, p. 104).
In this drawing, titled simply Los Angeles, Hockney reduces this very typical suburban vista to its very essence. Planes of pink and green, punctuated only by the prickly irregularity of a box hedge, suggest warm sunshine on a suburban wall in a sea of lawn, against the backdrop of a cloudless sky.