{"id":752551,"date":"2026-02-09T10:43:15","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T10:43:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/752551\/"},"modified":"2026-02-09T10:43:15","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T10:43:15","slug":"david-hockneys-first-serpentine-exhibition-brings-new-works-and-a-year-in-normandie-to-london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/752551\/","title":{"rendered":"David Hockney\u2019s First Serpentine Exhibition Brings New Works and A Year in Normandie to London"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"David David Hockney working on iPad: David Hockney, Normandy, 2021 \u00a9 David Hockney Photo Credit: Jonathan Wilkinson<\/p>\n

Serpentine<\/a> to present an exhibition of new and recent works by David Hockney<\/a> at Serpentine North<\/a>, marking the artist\u2019s first presentation with the institution. Free to the public, the exhibition brings together a new suite of paintings made especially for Serpentine alongside Hockney\u2019s monumental digital frieze A Year in Normandie (2020\u20132021), shown in London for the first time.<\/p>\n

David Hockney said:\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cI have always believed that art should be a deep pleasure\u2026There is always, everywhere, an enormous amount of suffering, but I believe that my duty as an artist is to overcome and alleviate the sterility of despair\u2026 New ways of seeing mean new ways of feeling\u2026 I do believe that painting can change the world.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

At the heart of the exhibition is a newly unveiled body of work comprising five still lifes and five portraits depicting figures from Hockney\u2019s immediate world, including family members and carers. Each painting is composed frontally and anchored by a recurring gingham tablecloth, a humble domestic motif that becomes a structural and pictorial device. Across these works, Hockney moves fluidly between abstraction and figuration, reinforcing his long-held belief that all figurative painting is, by nature, abstract when rendered on a flat surface.<\/p>\n

\"David David Hockney, Abstraction Resting on a Red and White Checkered Tablecloth, 2025. Acrylic on canvas, 36 x 48 in. (91.4 x 121.9 cm) \u00a9 David Hockney. Photo Prudence Cuming.<\/p>\n

The presentation is accompanied by a large-scale printed mural installed in the garden at Serpentine North. Drawn from the spring sequence of A Year in Normandie, the mural depicts a tree house and echoes the original conditions of its making in Hockney\u2019s Normandy garden. Positioned at the rear of the North Gallery, the work extends the exhibition beyond the interior, folding landscape, memory and digital process into Serpentine\u2019s architectural setting.<\/p>\n

Together, the exhibition offers an intimate yet expansive view of Hockney\u2019s recent practice \u2014 attentive to everyday life, grounded in observation, and continually rethinking what painting can be.<\/p>\n

Bettina Korek, CEO, Serpentine, said:\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cDavid Hockney\u2019s work invites us to slow down, to look closely, and to reconnect with the world around us. Presenting\u00a0A Year in Normandie\u00a0alongside new paintings at Serpentine North reflects our belief in making new connections between artists and audiences. We are delighted to welcome visitors to encounter these works freely, in the park.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director, Serpentine, said:\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cWe are excited\u00a0to present a new exhibition by one of the world\u2019s most important artists.\u00a0\u00a0At 88, David Hockney continues to explore the language of painting with remarkable ingenuity, fusing figurative and abstract modes across still lifes, portraits, and a panoramic frieze comprising more than 100 iPad paintings. In his new portraits, he captures not only his sitters but also the very act of seeing, while the frieze offers a deeply personal meditation on the passage of time. The changing seasons will resonate throughout the gallery and a new mural in the garden of Serpentine North highlights the transition from spring to summer as the surrounding landscape undergoes its own renewal.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts about Painting\u00a0will also present Hockney\u2019s celebrated frieze,\u00a0A Year in Normandie\u00a0(2020-2021), which will extend across the perimeter gallery of Serpentine North, charting the change of seasons at the artist\u2019s former studio in Normandy, France.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\" David Hockney, A Year in Normandie (detail), 2020-2021. Composite iPad painting \u00a9 David Hockney\"\" David Hockney, A Year in Normandie (detail), 2020-2021. Composite iPad painting \u00a9 David Hockney<\/p>\n

Recommending that people slow down and notice the beauty of the world around them, Hockney believes that everyday cycles, like a sunrise, are worth celebrating. While the world came to a halt in the Spring of 2020, Hockney continued his close observations of the world around him by producing over a hundred digital paintings on his iPad, working swiftly and intuitively much like the Impressionists. The format of\u00a0A Year in Normandie\u00a0was inspired by Chinese scroll paintings as well as the eleventh-century\u00a0Bayeux Tapestry. Hockney\u2019s digital painting tools\u00a0allowed him to capture the essence of each scene, skilfully recording changes in light and weather\u00a0en plein air. His radiant compositions combine flat areas of bold colour with playful pop-like touches. As the days pass, spring transitions into summer, then autumn and winter.<\/p>\n

David Hockney:\u00a0A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts about Painting\u00a0is curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director, and Claude Adjil, Curator at Large, with Liz Stumpf, Assistant Exhibitions Curator.\u00a0<\/p>\n

David Hockney:\u00a0A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts about Painting<\/strong>, 12th\u00a0March\u00a0\u2013 23rd\u00a0August 2026, Serpentine\u00a0North<\/a><\/p>\n

Accompanying the exhibition, Serpentine and Franz und Walther Koenig will publish a catalogue designed by the artist. The publication will bring together new and insightful contributions from Marco Livingstone and Olivia Laing. Generously illustrated in colour throughout, it also features an extensive conversation between David Hockney and Serpentine\u2019s Artistic Director, Hans Ulrich Obrist.<\/p>\n

Celebrating Turner Contemporary\u2019s 15th anniversary this spring, David Hockney will realise the next Sunley Window at the gallery opening on 1 April 2026. Measuring ten by seven metres, Hockney\u2019s work will transform the gallery\u2019s iconic floor-to-ceiling window in the Sunley Gallery overlooking Margate\u2019s beaches and the North Sea.<\/p>\n

About the artist\"\" David Hockney, London, 14 November 2023 \u00a9 David Hockney. Photo_ Jean-Pierre Gon\u00e7alves de Lima<\/p>\n

David Hockney (b. 1937 in Bradford, Yorkshire, UK) is one of the most influential artists of our time. Throughout his seven-decade spanning career, the British artist remains endlessly inventive and committed to celebrating the world around him, epitomised by his signature phrase, \u201cLove Life.\u201d A deep fascination with perspective and a desire to investigate how we see and represent the world led him to explore a range of artistic mediums from painting to photographic collages, set design, drawing and printmaking. Hockney\u2019s use of new technology is an extension of his interest in different modes of capturing reality. From his Polaroid composites to fax machine drawings and, in recent years, his iPad paintings, he seeks to unlock the potential of each technology for the creation of art.\u00a0<\/p>\n

David Hockney\u2019s work has been presented in major solo exhibitions in institutions worldwide, including Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (2025); Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (2023); Tate Britain, Centre Pompidou and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2017), among many others. David Hockney has been honoured with many prestigious awards, including his recognition as a Companion of Honour from the British and Commonwealth Order for his outstanding achievement in the arts in 1997. He recently received the Officier in France\u2019s L\u00e9gion d\u2019Honneur award (2026). David Hockney\u2019s work is part of numerous public collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; the Art Institute of Chicago; the National Portrait Gallery, London; Tate Britain, London; the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.\u00a0<\/p>\n

CategoriesTags<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"David Hockney working on iPad: David Hockney, Normandy, 2021 \u00a9 David Hockney Photo Credit: Jonathan Wilkinson Serpentine to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":752552,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,4024,393,4884,257,221766,79749,221767,57568,16,15],"class_list":["post-752551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-london","tag-britain","tag-david-hockney","tag-england","tag-great-britain","tag-london","tag-sepentine-gallery","tag-serpentine","tag-serpentine-north","tag-solo-exhibition","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116040264408140415","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=752551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752551\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/752552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=752551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=752551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=752551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}