Hockney, printmaker at Dulwich Picture Gallery

‘Sixty years is an amazing span of time for any artist, but very few printmakers have been as endlessly experimental and enthusiastic as Hockney.’ – Richard Lloyd (Curator)

Hockney, typically, was not particularly pleased that his entire career as a printmaker was being assembled by a devoted admirer, although his studio lent very rare works, following two paths in his process, his use of etching and his use of lithography, and switching back and forth between the two over the years. This show provided an overview of the celebrated British artist’s graphic career to coincide with the 60th anniversary of his first print show.

The exhibition featured 100 works focusing on Hockney’s etching and lithography and includes well-known works such as his A Rake’s Progress series (1961-63) and Illustrations for Six Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm (1969), alongside portraits of some of Hockney’s famous sitters and friends and experiments with photocopiers and inkjet printers.

There were six rooms in the Dulwich temporary exhibition space, the first three concentrated on his etchings, from the early 60s to the late 90s, and the following three rooms looked at his lithographs from the early 50s to the late 80s.

The show ended with a selection of ‘homemade prints’ which Hockney devised in the early 1990s using photocopiers, plus examples of his printed ‘computer drawings’ such as Rain on the Studio Window (2009), a prelude to the artist’s renowned iPad, which point in the direction he’s moving in at the moment.