A painting of pop star Harry Styles created by English artist David Hockney will go on display at the National Portrait Gallery in London. Hockney, 86, painted As It Was singer Styles, 29, in his art studio in Normandy, France.
The painting is one of more than 30 new portraits that will be displayed for the first time when David Hockney: Drawing from Life opens on November 2. The portrait of Styles depicts the singer wearing an orange and red cardigan with a pearl necklace and blue jeans.
He has released three albums as a solo artist, including the 2022 album Harry’s House which went to number one on the official UK albums chart.
Portraits of Hockney’s mother, the late Laura Hockney; his friend, the fashion designer Celia Birtwell; his former partner, curator Gregory Evans; and people from the local Normandy community where he lives will be displayed at the gallery.
The exhibition was previously on display at the National Portrait Gallery for just 20 days in 2020 before it was closed due to the pandemic. In addition to the 33 new works, there are also colour-pencil drawings created in Paris in the early 1970s and a selection of drawings from the 1980s, when the artist created a self-portrait every day over a period of two months.
Altogether, around 160 works from public and private collections, including from the artist himself, comprise David Hockney: Drawing From Life.
Speaking on the opening of the exhibition, Sarah Howgate, senior curator of contemporary collections at the National Portrait Gallery said: “Closing this five-star exhibition after just 20 days in 2020 was incredibly disappointing for the gallery and its many visitors, making this restaging of David Hockney: Drawing from Life all the more significant.
Director of the National Portrait Gallery, Nicholas Cullinan, said: “Following our reopening and the success of a brilliant first summer, I am delighted to be restaging this major exhibition for David Hockney at the new National Portrait Gallery, which makes good on a pledge I made to David in March 2020 that we would return to his wonderful exhibition in better days Hockney is one of the most internationally respected and renowned artists today, and to see his new portraits, made over the last couple of years and which demonstrate his constant and continuing ingenuity and creative force, is life-affirming.”
Image : David Hockney painting Harry Styles, (with portrait of Clive Davis) at his Normandy studio on 1st June 2022. Photo by JP Gonçalves de Lima.
Anna Melnykova, "Palace of Labor (palats praci), architector I. Pretro, 1916", shot with analog Canon camera, 35 mm Fuji film in March 2022.
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