Having quite comprehensively bridged the C19th and C20th with the self-portraits of Picasso, it seems appropriate to feature the self-portraits of David Hockney - an important contributor to the Pop Art movement of the 1960’s, he is considered one of the most influential British artists of the twentieth century. Picasso’s influence on Hockney’s mid-career work is self evident (see 1986 painting), and in one of the works here (the 1973 etching), he pays direct homage to Picasso.
Hockney was born in Bradford, Yorkshire 9 July 1937. He went to Bradford Grammar School, Bradford College of Art and the Royal College of Art in London. While still a student at the Royal College of Art, Hockney was featured in the exhibition Young Contemporaries, alongside Peter Blake, that announced the arrival of British Pop Art. He became associated with the movement, but his early works also display expressionist elements, not dissimilar to certain works by Francis Bacon.
From 1963 Hockney was represented by the influential art dealer John Kasmin. In the same year he visited New York, making contact with Andy Warhol. A later visit to California, where he lived for many years, inspired him to make a series of paintings of swimming pools using the comparatively new Acrylic medium and rendered in a highly realistic style using vibrant colours.
In 1967, his painting, Peter Getting Out Of Nick's Pool, won the John Moores Painting Prize at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. He also made prints, portraits of friends, and stage designs for the Royal Court Theatre, Glyndebourne, La Scala and the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.
Hockney is currently based in London and Bridlington, Yorkshire, where he has been painting the Yorkshire landscapes for the past few years.
1954
1954
1954
1955
1973
1977
1977
1980
1983
1986
1999
 |
| 2003 |
2005
2009 iPhone
 |
| 2012 iPad |
 |
| 2012 iPad |
 |
| 2012 iPad |
An artist that grew up in the classical tradition and went on to be perhaps the most innovative painter of the C20th was Pablo Picasso, 25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973. He was a Spanish painter, draughtsman, and sculptor who lived most of his adult life in France. Picasso’s work spans over seven decades and thousands of pieces.
Picasso's father, Jose Ruíz, was also an artist from whom the young Picasso received his first art training. Pablo attended the carpenter schools at which his father taught and as an early teen passed the entrance exam to the School of Fine Arts with ease. Though he studied at Academia de San Fernando in Madrid, he did not finish – leaving before completing even one year. He was a rebellious youth and moved back and forth between Barcelona and Paris several times between the years 1899 and 1904.
These years also represent his first “period”, the Blue Period, and a time when the young Picasso ceased to sign his full name choosing instead to sign his work only “Picasso”. The Blue Period (1901 – 1904) is characterized by images containing shades of blue and a feeling of melancholy and despair presumably caused by the recent death of a friend.
The Blue Period gave way to the Rose Period with its more cheerful subject matter and soon Picasso was experimenting with what would become cubism along with fellow artist and creator Georges Braque, a French painter and sculptor. Cubism, an important abstract art movement in the early 1900s, attempts to show the subject matter from many viewpoints using an abstracted form and random angles. His works “Les Demoiselles d'Avignon”, one of his earliest cubist pieces and arguably one of the best, is a fantastic example of the artistic genre.
Throughout his long career, Picasso often used self-portraits to depict himself in the many different guises, disguises and incarnations of his autobiographical artistic persona.
The range of styles of these self-portraits over a lifetime is astonishing, and his influence and impact on contemporary art can never be underestimated.
And here’s something maybe you didn’t know – Pablo Picasso was actually christened Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso!
1896
1896
1901
1901
1901 (blue period)
1906
1907
1917
1938
1972
1972
1972 "Facing Death"
