The Blue Guitar (complete portfolio)
The Blue Guitar (complete portfolio)
Signed Print
David Hockney
£40,000-£60,000
$80,000-$110,000 Value Indicator
$70,000-$100,000 Value Indicator
¥350,000-¥520,000 Value Indicator
€45,000-€70,000 Value Indicator
$390,000-$590,000 Value Indicator
¥6,730,000-¥10,100,000 Value Indicator
$50,000-$80,000 Value Indicator
AAGR (5 years) This estimate blends recent public auction records with our own private sale data and network demand.
There aren't enough data points on this work for a comprehensive result. Please speak to a specialist by making an enquiry.
Medium: Etching
Edition size: 200
Year: 1976
Size: H 53cm x W 46cm
Signed: Yes
Format: Signed Print
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Auction Results
| Auction Date | Auction House | Artwork | Hammer Price | Return to Seller | Buyer Paid |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| November 2023 | Sotheby's Online - United Kingdom | The Blue Guitar (complete portfolio) - Signed Print | |||
| October 2023 | Christie's New York - United States | The Blue Guitar (complete portfolio) - Signed Print | |||
| July 2023 | Christie's New York - United States | The Blue Guitar (complete portfolio) - Signed Print | |||
| April 2023 | Christie's New York - United States | The Blue Guitar (complete portfolio) - Signed Print | |||
| September 2022 | Phillips London - United Kingdom | The Blue Guitar (complete portfolio) - Signed Print | |||
| September 2019 | Sotheby's Online - United Kingdom | The Blue Guitar (complete portfolio) - Signed Print | |||
| March 2018 | Sotheby's Online - United Kingdom | The Blue Guitar (complete portfolio) - Signed Print |
Meaning & Analysis
In 1976 Hockney visited Fire Island with his friends Henry Geldzahler and writer Christopher Isherwood. It was here that he came across Wallace Stevens’s 1936 poem The Man with the Blue Guitar which had been inspired by a 1903 painting by Picasso entitled The Old Guitarist. Hockney decided to base a series of works on the poems and described how the “etchings themselves were not conceived as literal illustrations of the poem but as an interpretation of its themes in visual terms. Like the poem, they are about transformations within art as well as the relation between reality and the imagination, so these are pictures and different styles of representation juxtaposed and reflected and dissolved within the same frame”.
These strange compositions are filled with unreadable symbols, offering a dreamlike encounter with the poems of Wallace Stevens, who was not the first poet Hockney had been inspired by. In 1967 he published the series Illustrations For Fourteen Poems By C.P. Cavafywhich was again a loose interpretation of a body of work by the Greek homosexual poet. Even earlier, in 1961, Hockney had produced a print entitled Myself and My Heroes where he portrayed himself alongside American poet Walt Whitman and Gandhi.
