Later this year, the prestigious Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris will host a new retrospective exhibition dedicated to the great British artist David Hockney.
David Hockney got his first retrospective in 1970 and has been the subject of many more since then. The Fondation Louis Vuitton plans to open the exhibition David Hockney 25 on April 9, 2025, featuring over four hundred works by the artist. Many of these works come from Hockney himself, while others will be on loan from several private and museum collections. Taking up eleven galleries, the show is, according to Hockney, by far the largest exhibition he has ever participated in.
The show will feature some of Hockney’s earlier works, including A Bigger Splash (1967), Portrait of an Artist (1972), and A Bigger Grand Canyon (1998). But most of the exhibition will focus on the art created in the twenty-first century. It will be an opportunity to show how the artist has readily incorporated new media and technologies, including digital drawing and immersive video experiences. However, the organizers also intend to show the influences Hockney has drawn from over his career. His iPad drawings, for example, show the same landscapes in different seasons, providing opportunities to play with light and color. The subjects range from Normandy to the artist’s native Yorkshire. It’s not difficult, therefore, to draw parallels to the series created by French Impressionists like Monet’s Haystacks. Other exhibited works show traces of Van Gogh, Picasso, and the Old Masters. Hockney plans to unveil several new works as part of the exhibition, including After Blake: Less is Known than People Think. It is an acrylic painting based on a watercolor by the British poet and printmaker William Blake, with the original titled Dante and Virgil Approaching the Angel Who Guards the Entrance of Purgatory.
The David Hockney Foundation has its work cut out for them. On top of the David Hockney 25 retrospective in Paris, the organization is also hard at work putting out the first volume of the artist’s catalogue raisonné. Last year, the foundation announced they are nearing completion of the project, with this first volume dedicated strictly to paintings. It will contain about 35,000 entries and will be available online starting in 2026. As part of the project, Hockney is writing essays to accompany some of the works. It is unknown how long the remaining volumes will take, as they will contain thousands of Hockney’s prints and digital works.
David Hockney 25 will run at the Fondation Louis Vuitton from April 9th to September 1st.