David Hockney An Image of Celia (M.C.A.T 277) For Sale

An Image of Celia, one of 26 prints from David Hockney’s groundbreaking Moving Focus series,  depicts his long time muse, collaborator and friend, famed British fashion and textile designer, Celia Birtwell with a new innovative artistic language.

Moving Focus series is illustrative of Hockney’s willingness to create discourse with art history in his creative portfolio – throughout the series, the artist pays homage to Picasso’s portraits, most notable in An Image of Celia, and the reconfigured style of cubism. Infact, An Image of Celia recalls Picasso’s famous portraits of his muse Dora Maar, in which he experimented with multiple perspectives of her to evolve his Cubist theories.

Hockney said about Birtwell, ‘Portraits aren't just made up of drawing, they are made up of other insights as well. Celia is one of the few girls I know really well. I've drawn her so many times and knowing her makes it always slightly different.’

The lithograph and screenprint in colours with collage is a bold artistic departure from his earlier naïve, soft edged depictions Birtwell: in An Image of Celia the subject has been reconfigured with fragmentation, distorted perspective, bold colourings, and textures so rich they feel more like a painting than a print.

In An Image of Celia, she appears to be sprawled out on an armchair, perhaps in a dress made up of her own bold print designs, we can clearly see her elegant green shoes. The subject’s face is recognisable but skewered through fragmentation: her facial features on a square cube are recognisable through bold blue and green eyes, thick black lashes and eye crayon, dewy skin and rouge lips. The bright colourings of Birtwell, the central subject, are juxtaposed with the dark background of the room; there’s a hint of some disquiet to the strangely formatted scene where the chair is larger than Birtwell herself.

An Image of Celia is a striking artwork, which is illustrative of the many artistic forms, Hockney segued into this Moving Focus series: he not only transcends his own visual language but creates a dialogue with art history traditions of past centuries.

 

Image of Celia State I: A signed and dated lithograph, part of an edition of 10, size 125.7 x 99.1

Image of Celia State II: A signed and dated lithograph, part of an edition of 10, size 156.2 x 107.3