David Hockney Lithograph of Water Made of Lines (M.C.A.T 203) For Sale|

Much like diving off a springboard into the cool depths of a swimming pool, Hockney’s move to the ‘Golden State’ of California in 1964 was a dive into freedom, sexual liberation, and a new-found artistic inspiration: the swimming pool. Across the late 20^th century, David Hockney has become synonymous with the swimming pool, an image he returned to multiple times throughout his career. Using the swimming pool as a motif to express a multitude of meanings, looking into the water of these pools is much like looking into the mind of Hockney himself. This lithograph is a testament to Hockney’s ability to blend realism with abstraction and is as conceptually profound as it is visually striking.

Created in 1978, this print is part of a collection of eleven, all of which depict a peaceful scene of the swimming pool. This series showcases Hockney’s lifelong fascination with light, movement and water. Hockney employed a vivid colour palette to capture the dynamic and rich nature of water. However, it was no easy task to depict the ephemeral nature of water within his work, as Hockney said “It is a formal problem to represent water, to describe water, because it can be anything. It can be any colour, it’s movable, and it has no set visual description.” There is a profoundness in the simplicity of this screenprint, as the gentle patches of blue wash are enough to convince the viewer that we are looking at a filled swimming pool. The natural rhythms and movement of water is mimicked by Hockney’s use of wiggling blue lines and patterns. The variety in curvature and thickness of each line further creates a sense of motion and depth. A central theme within Hockney’s lithographs series is the capturing of light and water as they interact with one another. The viewer gets a sense of the light refracting on water, and this shimmering effect creates a visual dichotomy between realism and abstraction.