David Hockney Yosemite Suite No.1 For Sale

Yosemite Suite 1 by David Hockney is a signed print, the first of from David Hockney's Yossemite suite where the artist utilised the digital technology for the first time to scale up his sketches.

Created en plein air, Hockney ventured to his favourite Californian landmark, the Yosemite National Park, to capture the vibrant landscapes: yet in Yosemite Suite 1, the artist looks out to the famed Ahwahnee Hotel and the tourists passing by. Unlike Hockney’s earlier landscapes, here the artist includes human presence in the picture as if to highlight the grand scale of the natural scenery.

Looming in the background are the steep mountains so associated with Yosemite, tall craggy trees and shrubland feature to the side of the main hotel front. The mountainous background in blue recalls the works of old masters who painted alpine hills called the ‘blue hills of memory,’ which fascinated Hockney. The Ahwahnee Hotel is depicted in a burnt sunshine yellowstone shade mixed with the bluey, green shades of the hinterland, the scene is sweeped in washes of colour that form a naturalism to the pictures subject.

Hockney commented on the Ipad drawings , ‘the colour is right at your fingertips”. This allows the artist to experiment with neon-bright hues, providing a firm counterpoint to the black and white Yosemite photographs of Ansel Adams.’

Hockney isn’t trying to disguise the digital rendering of the image but somehow still manages to create an image from a flat surface that has such depth and dimension to it, the viewer could be witnessing the scene in real life.