David Hockney — The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire, 14 March 2011

David Hockney (Bradford, 1937) is one of the most important and influential figures in British contemporary art. A protagonist of English Pop Art in the 1960s, over more than six decades he has developed an intensely personal inquiry into the representation of space, landscape, light and perception, with painting, photography, printmaking and, more recently, digital tools coexisting in his production. His use of the iPhone and iPad is one of the most innovative chapters of his career: Hockney turned the device into a genuine drawing instrument, demonstrating how new technology can converse with the tradition of landscape painting.

The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire, 14 March 2011 belongs to one of the most recognisable cycles of Hockney's recent production, devoted to the coming of spring in the landscape of the East Riding of Yorkshire, a region to which the artist was profoundly attached. Between January and June 2011 Hockney observed and recorded the Woldgate landscape repeatedly, documenting its transformation almost day by day. The title itself, with its precise indication of 14 March 2011, carries that diaristic dimension: the work becomes the record of a specific moment, as nature passes from winter into spring.

The use of the iPad is fundamental. Hockney drew directly on the screen, exploiting the possibility of layering marks and colours with great immediacy; the technology does not replace traditional drawing but becomes a new means through which to observe nature, and the result retains the spontaneity of the manual gesture while gaining the luminosity and chromatic saturation characteristic of the medium. The composition is built on a deep perspective, the road and the vegetation drawing the eye into the landscape, with trees, branches and the first signs of the new season creating a vibrant environment in which colour, light and rhythm take the leading role. More than offering a photographic reproduction of the place, Hockney restores the experience of observation itself. The large scale of the print, 140 × 105 cm, amplifies an image originally made on the small screen of the iPad, transforming an intimate and immediate gesture into a visual presence of almost painterly character, while an edition limited to 25 examples places the work among the most selective digital editions connected to this important cycle.