The artist in his studio.
82 portraits and a still life is the David Hockney exhibition that can be seen at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao until February 25. It is much closer and more accessible than when it premiered at the institution that commissioned it, the Royal Academy of Arts in London. And it will be even closer when the documentary opens in theaters on February 12 Hockney at the Royal Academy of Arts. In fact, thanks to this film, the last two great exhibitions of the English artist with a soul of Los Angeles colors will always remain.
"Portraits, landscapes, and still life, what else is there?", Hockney.
The series of documentaries Exhibition on Screen (distributed in Spain by A Contracorriente) has produced in recent years a series of films that attempt to combine painting and film.
Raised as a trip to the history of art, in its different stages and styles; They are also a walk from the armchair to the great museums of the world. From the MoMA in New York to the D'Orsay in Paris, from the Tate Modern in London to the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Some of those exhibitions that each year invite us to take a trip, are an excuse to buy a plane ticket, which we never bought, and now they can be seen in these films.
The idea came to the filmmaker and documentarian Phil Grabsky and his team. In the beginning, seven or eight years ago when they started, they had to "convince people", but today his films are reaching 55 countries worldwide and in the United Kingdom they are released with such fanfare as a Hollywood blockbuster.
Portraits of a life.
That's how it happened with Hockney at the Royal Academy of Arts (premiere February 12 in Spain), in which David Hockney himself guides us through his last two major exhibitions: A Bigger Picture (2012) and 82 portraits and a still life. Completely opposite, the first was a collection and review of the landscapes he painted throughout his career, from his first trip to Egypt in 1963 until his return to his native Yorkshire. And the second is a series of portraits that he took in his studio in Los Angeles, always under the same circumstances: each one in a maximum of 22 hours.
Hockney's is the 18th documentary of the fifth season of Exhibition on Screen, but it is a special one, because the artist is alive, of course; and also marks a little the beginning of the year in which he turns 80. “We were able to talk to him three times,” says Grabsky. And in those meetings he recounts his processes, his passions, what art is for him. Watching him work with brushes in nature or with an iPad in the car is amazing.
Yorkshire according to David Hockney.
Each of the exhibitions and artists have been chosen because “I had an important story to tell,” says Grabsky, also because of the period he represented and because of his massive interest.
This year before Hockney, the documentaries of Manet and Canaletto; and after the film by the English painter they will hit theaters Goya, a show of flesh and blood (February 19th) ; Matisse, from Tate Modern and MoMA (26 of February) ; I, Claude Monet (March 5) and Cézanne: Portraits of a Life (March 12) .