David Hockney: Drawing from Life


Charming exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery looking at how David Hockney has used life drawing throughout his career.

What made this charming was the show concentrated on just three people plus self-portraits. The self-portraits began and ended the show with rooms in-between devoted to Celia Birtwell, the designer and a life long friend, Gregory Evans, a x-lover and now a curator and Marcus Payne, a master printer Hockney has worked with for a number of years. There is also a small room devoted to vey touching drawings of his mother.

I loved the pictures of Birtwell which incorporated her own designs and the commentary did talk about how the two artists influenced each other. It was beautiful to watch the sitters age and a lovely touch to end with a wall of drawings done them all less than a year ago.

The drawings were beautiful, and it was clever to take one aspect of an artists work and use it to show the trajectory of their career however what I most took from it was a warming sense of friendship.

Closes 28 June 2020

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