Four Part Splinge

Combining lithography and screen printing across multiple sheets, Four Part Splinge is one of the most striking in the Some New Prints series. With its serene blue background and biomorphic shapes it recalls Picasso's paintings of abstracted figures on the beach. Hockney had long been fascinated with Cubism and its ability to diffuse and refract perspective to become fragmented. In earlier series such as his photo collages and Moving Focus he had experimented with employing multiple perspectives in order to represent how his eye truly sees, or how he, as he put it, ‘feels space’. With this work space is clearly felt; despite being a planographic print the work feels strongly three dimensional and dynamic, its whole surface suffused in movement and vitality, the contrasting colours adding to the sense of fantasy and dreamlike visions.

Hockney combines the sunny palette of California with the Cubist aesthetic, combining a series of marks and effects, from gestural brushstrokes to washes of ink, in order to create a bricolage of techniques and influences that reflects the progression of his style and his mastery of the medium of print at this point in his career. Published over 30 years after his earliest etchings, this series points to Hockney’s constant evolution as an artist which shows no signs of slowing down as he continues to embrace digital technologies today.