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Exhibition: “David Hockney 25” at Fondation Louis Vuitton
9 April - 31 August
David Hockney 25
From 09.04.2025 to 31.08.2025
Prices : 0 € – 32 €
Hours : 11h-20h
“Do remember they can’t cancel the Spring”
In the Spring of 2025, the Fondation is inviting David Hockney, one of the most influential artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, to take over the entire building for an exhibition that will be exceptional in its scale and its originality.
The exhibition, which will be held from 9 April to 31 August 2025, will bring together more than 400 of his works (from 1955 to 2025) including paintings from international, institutional, and private collections, as well as works from the artist’s own studio and Foundation. There will be works in a variety of media including oil and acrylic painting, ink, pencil and charcoal drawing, digital art (works on iPhone, iPad, photographic drawings…) and immersive video installations.
David Hockney has been personally involved in every aspect of the exhibition and has, together with his partner and studio manager Jean-Pierre Gonçalves de Lima, chosen to focus particularly on the past 25 years whilst also including the iconic early works, offering visitors a rare insight into his creative universe, spanning seven decades. The artist has participated in the composition of each sequence and the layout of each space, in a permanent dialogue with his assistant Jonathan Wilkinson.
This exhibition means an enormous amount because it is the largest exhibition I’ve ever had – 11 rooms in the Fondation Louis Vuitton. Some of the very last paintings I’m working on now will be included in it, and I think it’s going to be very good.
As an introduction, the exhibition will begin, at the pond level, with a selection of emblematic works from the 1950s to the 1970s – including Hockney’s beginnings in Bradford (Portrait of My Father, 1955), his time in London and then California. The swimming pool – a signature theme for the artist – appears in A Bigger Splash, 1967 and Portrait of An Artist (Pool with Two Figures), 1972. His series of double portraits is represented by two major works: Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy, 1970-1971 and Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy, 1968.
Nature becomes increasingly important in David Hockney’s work in the decade 1980 to 1990 – as illustrated by A Bigger Grand Canyon, 1998 – before he returns to Europe to continue his exploration of familiar landscapes.
The core of the exhibition will concentrate on the past 25 years, spent mainly in Yorkshire, Normandy, and London. This period, in the exhibition, opens with a celebration of the Yorkshire landscape: the artist paints a hawthorn bush in a spectacular explosion of spring (May Blossom on the Roman Road, 2009); his observation of the changing seasons culminates in the monumental winter landscape Bigger Trees near Warter or/ou Peinture sur le Motif pour le Nouvel Age Post-Photographique, 2007, generously loaned by the Tate.
This event is published on ArtAddict Galleria, where we explore the intersections of art, history, and culture. Stay tuned for more insights and discoveries