- Dates: November 10, 2017–February 25, 2018
- Curated by Edith Devaney
- Exhibition organized by the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in collaboration with the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
After his monumental landscape exhibition in 2012, the artist returns to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao with an intense, immersive installation of portraits.
Each work is the same size, was painted in the same time frame of three days, and shows the sitter in the same chair, illuminated by the bright light of southern California, against the same vivid blue background.
Thanks to Hockney’s virtuoso paint handling, the uniformity of the elements in each painting underscores the differences between the sitters, allowing their personalities to leap off the canvas with warmth and immediacy.
The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is pleased to present David Hockney: 82 Portraits and 1 Still-life, an exhibition featuring a remarkable new body of work in which the British artist returns to portraiture with a renewed creative vigor, offering an intimate snapshot of the LA art world and the people who have crossed his path in recent years.