David Hockney
(1985)

Moving Focus, Hockney’s series of prints made with master printer Ken Tyler from 1984-1987, reflect the enduring influence of cubism on the artist, in particularly the work of Picasso, as well as an enthusiasm for Chinese scroll painting, with which Hockney had become fascinated.
Hockney had discovered the Hotel Romano Angeles in the small town of Acatlán, Hidalgo Province, by accident after his car had broken down on a trip from Mexico City to Oaxaca. Arranged around a courtyard with tropical plants and a well at its centre, it’s rustic charm and colour had immediately appealed to the artist. On his return to Los Angeles Hockney contacted Ken Tyler to enlist his help. Tyler proposed a new lithographic method which he had recently developed, the mylar technique. Using prepared sheets of the semi-transparent plastic the technique allowed Hockney to overlay colour drawings, simulating the colour separation necessary for colour lithography, and to visualise the final effect, something which had not hitherto been possible. This was liberating for a colourist like Hockney, and the Hotel Acatlán prints are some of the most vibrant in his graphic oeuvre. 

https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6306749

Hotel Acatlán: First Day, from Moving Focus
1985
Lithograph in colors, on two sheets of TGL handmade paper
73 x 188.6 cm
Private collection (Sold by Christie’s on 10 March 2021)
https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6306749

 <b>David Hockney</b>
(1978)

In August 1978, Hockney establishes Los Angeles as his permanent place of residence. That same month, he visits Bedford, in upstate New York, to work with printer Ken Tyler on the shoes Paper Pools, made using an innovative process of moulding and pressing coloured paper pulp according to the layouts of compositions of shimmering swimming pools. 

https://www.thedavidhockneyfoundation.org/chronology/1978

A Large Diver (Paper Pool 27)
1978
colored and pressed paper pulp
198 ,4 x 458.5 cm
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/79.18.A-L/

 David Hockney
(1966

”I had become interested in the more general problem of painting the water, finding a way to do it. T is an interesting formal problem, really, apart from its subject matter; it is a formal problem to represent water, to describe water, because it can be anything—it can be any colour, it’s movable, it has no set visual description; I just used my drawings for these paintings and my head invented.”

David Hockney

Sunbather
1966
Acrylic on canvas
182 x 182 cm
Museum Ludwig, Köln
https://museum-ludwig.kulturelles-erbe-koeln.de/documents/obj/05010046

 David Hockney
(1972)
 

The next work brings together two of Hockney's themes from his paintings of the late 1960s and early 1970s: the swimming pool, and the double portrait. It depicts a male figure in white trunks swimming underwater, and the painter Peter Schlesinger, Hockney's former lover and muse, fully clothed and standing at the edge of the pool looking down at the swimmer. The painting is set in southern France, near Saint-Tropez. In characteristic Hockney style, the foreground is simplified and flattened with a view of tree-clad hills in the background. The composition was inspired by a serendipitous combination of photographs that Hockney noticed on his studio floor: one of a man swimming underwater, taken in California in 1966, and the other of a man standing looking at the ground. Juxtaposed, it appeared as if the standing person were looking at the swimmer.

Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)
1972
Acrylic on canvas
213.5 x 305 cm
Private collection (Sold at Christie's in November 2018 for $90.3 million, at that time the highest price ever paid at auction for a painting by a living artist. )
https://www.christies.com/en/stories/david-hockney-portrait-of-an-artist-pool-with-two-figures-fc646a8d6dfb4ea98814460d351e485b

 David Hockney
(1967)
 

Painted in 1967, A Bigger Splash is perhaps David Hockney's best-known artwork. What is it that makes this painting so iconic and seductive – and still very modern-looking fifty years after it was made?
The painting depicts a sun-drenched swimming pool in Los Angeles. Behind the pool is a pink modernist building and an empty chair. The silhouettes of neighbouring buildings are reflected in the building’s large window. Two spindly palm trees and a neat border of grass suggest carefully manicured gardens. Unusually for Hockney's paintings from this time, there is no-one in sight and the scene is almost entirely still … apart from the splash.

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hockney-a-bigger-splash-t03254/understanding-david-hockneys-bigger-splash

A bigger splash
1967
Acrylic paint on canvas
242 x 243 cm 
Tate, London
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hockney-a-bigger-splash-t03254

David Hockney

(1968)

Before the famous double portraits and before some of the best-known pool paintings, Hockney occasionally turned his attention to the California coastline itself. In California Seascape the subject is deceptively simple: sea, sky and a distant horizon. Yet the painting captures something that fascinated him from the moment he arrived in Los Angeles—the extraordinary light, the sense of openness and the feeling that space stretches on forever. Sometimes a painting doesn't need much more than that.

California Seascape
1968
Acrylic on canvas
213 x 305 cm
Private collection

 David Hockney
(1964)
 

California Art Collector was the second painting by Hockney from his first, momentous visit to Los Angeles and is the first painting to convey the dramatic impact his new surroundings would have on his career. Hockney's choice of subject is only the most obvious development, as this new environment would also subtly affect his aesthetic choices of materials and technique. With this painting, Hockney first used acrylic paints and with a new sense of light and color, he depicted his first swimming pool while synthesizing his first impressions of the affluence and glamour of Beverly Hills.
 
https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2009/contemporary-art-evening-auction-n08592/lot.25.html

California Art Collector (1964)
1964
Acrylic on canvas
152 x 177cm
Private collection ( sold at Sotheby's, New York, November 10, 1993, Lot 31)
https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2009/contemporary-art-evening-auction-n08592/lot.25.html