Artwork details

Artist

Title

The Australian National Gallery Canberra (Paper Pool 17)

Description

Paper 80 x 135 cm / 31.5 x 53 in.
Image 53.5 x 129 cm / 21 x 50.75 in.

Lithograph on white paper. This vintage, original poster's imagery is taken from David Hockney's 1978 work "A diver [A diver, paper pool 17]", composed of 12 hand colored pressed paper pulp sheets. The poster was printed by Petersburg Press on the occasion of the artist’s 1982 exhibit at the National Gallery of Australia.

Warm grey provides the background for this composition, featuring a swimmer in the nude just after jumping from a narrow yellow diving board. Shadows and reflections ripple through the crystalline blue water, obscuring the diver's body. At his feet, a splash of white disturbs the surface. A narrow stripe of vibrant green borders the top of the pool.

Hockney's iconic pool imagery emerged from the artist's love affair with California, where he first visited in 1963. During this first visit, he scribed a postcard to his painting dealer John Kasmin, back in Britain. “Arrived in the promised land 2 days ago,” he wrote on the back of a postcard featuring sunbathers on a beach and juicy, California oranges. “The world’s most beautiful city is here – LA… You must come.” Won over by the state’s sunny weather and relaxed way of life, Hockney would paint, draw, and photograph the state’s bright colors and light countless times. The swimming pool became his symbol for California.

Here, Hockney’s careful drawing style loosens into painterly abstraction, with the water’s transparency and liquidity represented with daubs of color. The artist worked with vats of dyed rag pulp, which he would apply to metal molds according to his drawings. Hockney was able to use this spontaneous paper pulp medium to convey the quality and movement of water.

Date

1982

Medium

Colour Lithograph

Edition

Signature

Unsigned

Image

21 x 50.75 inches

Sheet

31.5 x 53 inches

Status

Available

Price

$3,000.00

David Hockney

Born in Bradford England on the 9th July 1937 David Hockney was interested in art from a very early age, and was an admirer of Fragonard, Picasso and Matisse. The fifth of six children his parents encouraged his artistic experimentation. He went to the Bradford College of Art 1953-57. To fulfil his national service, he worked in hospitals as he was a conscientious objector to war. Then in 1959 he was accepted into the Royal College of Art, Graduate school in London.