Name: Diptychon
Brand: David Hockney
Rating: 5 (236 reviews)

Track auction value trend

The value of David Hockney's Diptychon (signed) is estimated to be worth between £7,000 and £10,500. This screenprint has shown consistent value growth, with an average annual growth rate of 3%. This work has an auction history of four total sales since its entry to the market on 17th February 2012. In the past 12 months, the average selling price was £7,500 across one sale. Over the past five years, the hammer price has ranged from £6,025 in November 2020 to £7,900 in May 2021. The edition size of this artwork is limited to 50.

Meaning & Analysis

Emphasising colour and contrast, David Hockney’s screenprint Diptychon (1989) exhibits striking lines, clean forms, and vivid juxtapositions. As part of the printmaking process, the artist cut paper sheets into forms of varying shapes and sizes and arranged them into playful structures. Throughout his career, Hockney has favoured etchings over other printmaking media. Following Cleanliness Is Next To Godliness (1964), Hockney’s famous print of a naked man standing behind a shower curtain, Diptychon is a rare instance of the artist’s late foray into the screen-printing technique.

read more about Abstractions

What suggests that the playful arrangement of abstract forms may represent the natural world are the blades of glass discernible in the green pattern covering the large cut-out shape placed at the very bottom of the image. The hand-cut stencils are brought together to create a lively arrangement and many of them, indeed, resemble vegetal forms. Given its decorative appeal and powerful simplicity, the work creates links with the legacy of Henri Matisse, especially such works as Icarus (1943), The Blue Nude (1952), and The Snail (1953). Like Matisse, who saw cut-outs as a powerful alternative to painting, Hockney takes recourse to the world of shapes to arrive at a new way of experiencing an image.