David Hockney: Drawing from Life (2020) at the National Portrait Gallery

I'm very much looking forward to David Hockney: Drawing from Life - at the National Portrait Gallery in early 2020.

David Hockney Self Portrait, March 14 2012, iPad drawing printed on paper Exhibition Proof 37 x 28" © David Hockney

The NPG last week announced that they would be staging the first major exhibition devoted to David Hockney’s drawings in over twenty years.

The exhibition will run 27 February – 28 June 2020.

I remember extremely clearly visiting the last exhibition of his drawings in London. 
'David Hockney - A Drawing Retrospective' at the Royal Academy of Arts (Nov. 1995 - Jan. 1996) - and indeed still have the catalogue prominent in my bookshelves. It had a big impact on me and the regard I have for the use of coloured pencils to make drawings as fine art.

David Hockney Celia, Carennac, August 1971,  coloured pencil on paper 17 x 14" © David Hockney Photo Credit: Richard Schmidt Collection The David Hockney Foundation; D

The exhibition 'David Hockney - A Drawing Retrospective', an exhibition of his drawings that I visited at the Royal Academy of Arts (Nov. 1995 - Jan. 1996), included very many of the pencil drawings of his family, friends and lovers. One of the reasons I like Hockney is because he has such a high regard for drawing apparently derived from his early training in Bradford. I gather he went through a phase of drawing according to the principles of American Abstract Expressionism at the Royal College of Art - drawings which represented feelings - but gave that up as a barren place to be. Anyway, he opened the Summer exhibition at the Royal Academy of Art this year and placed an emphasis on drawing as having fundamental importance in the world of art - as related in the BBC online interview with him "Taking Art back to the basics"

What's the Hockney exhibition at the NPG about?

Hockney is recognised as one of the master draughtsmen of our times and a champion of the medium. NPG

The exhibition will focus on

• Hockney as a draughtsman from the 1950s to now
• include 150 works from public and private collections across the world - and his own collection - with five main groups of drawings
• self portraits over time
• his depictions of his family and close friends
• his muse, Celia Birtwell;
• his mother, Laura Hockney; and
• his friends - the curator, Gregory Evans and master printer, Maurice Payne.

In doing so, it will seek to trace the trajectory of his drawing practice over a period of five decades. 

...it will examine not only how drawing is fundamental to the artist’s distinctive way of observing the world around him, but also how it has often been a testing ground for ideas and modes of expression later played out in his paintings. 

The exhibition will also include some previously unseen work - new portraits of some of the sitters and drawings which have previously never been shared in public!

I'm a big David Hockney fan and can activate a mental video in my head of most of his past exhibitions by just thinking about the title of the exhibition and which gallery it was at. I can even remember which drawing or painting I spent ages staring at! I'm a particular fan of his drawings and even contacted the website to find out how to get a hold of copy of his facsimile sketchbook as seen at the last Hockney Portraits exhibition at the NPG in 2006.

"What an artist is trying to do for people is bring them closer to something, because of course art is about sharing; you wouldn't be an artist unless you wanted to share an experience, a thought"
David Hockney / David Hockney Portraits - from the 2006 NPG exhibition

Hopefully we'll see more facsimile sketchbooks this time round?

Which media will the exhibition include?

David Hockney Mother, Bradford. 19 Feb 1979Sepia ink on paper 14 x 11 inches © David Hockney Photo Credit: Richard Schmidt Collection The David Hockney Foundation;

It's going to include traditional drawing media and equipment
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