David Hockney Is Sure his Major Paris Show Will Be Very Good
The landmark exhibition at Fondation Louis Vuitton will showcase over 400 works, spanning seven decades. Save to My Ocula
David Hockney, the legendary British artist, will open his largest exhibition to date at Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris this April.
Curated by Sir Norman Rosenthal, former chief curator at London‘s Royal Academy of Arts, in collaboration with Hockney and his partner and studio manager Jean-Pierre Gonçalves de Lima, the exhibition titled David Hockney, 25 (9 April–1 September 2025) will cover the artist’s practice from 1995 to the present through more than 400 artworks.
‘This exhibition means an enormous amount because it is the largest exhibition I’ve ever had,’ said Hockney, who is 87. ‘Some of the most recent paintings I’m working on now will be included in it, and I think it’s going to be very good,’ he added.
Occupying the entirety of the Paris institution, the 11-room exhibition will display pieces from international institutions and private collections, alongside works from Hockney’s studio and the Fondation. It will encompass mediums Hockney experimented with throughout his life, including oil and acrylic, digital art, video, and installation.
The exhibition will focus on the past 25 years, which Hockney predominantly spent in Normandy, France; Yorkshire, England; and London, starting with a selection of his iconic early works.
Among them are A Bigger Splash (1967) and Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) (1972), which became the most expensive work by a living artist when it sold for 90.3 million USD at Christie’s in New York in 2018. Today, it sits at number two, replaced by Jeff Koons’ Rabbit (1986).
More recent works feature the landscapes Hockney surrounded himself with in his later years—from Yorkshire’s changing seasons captured through paint to the artist’s impressions of Normandy, where he spent much of lockdown, captured on iPad.
A number of works have never been exhibited, including two recent paintings—After Munch: Less is Known than People Think (2023) and After Blake: Less is Known than People Think (2024)—paying homage to iconic artists Edvard Munch and William Blake. They will be shown in the final room alongside Hockney’s latest self-portrait.
The landmark exhibition prefigures the publication of the first volume of Hockney’s catalogue raisonné scheduled for 2026. —[O]
Main image: David Hockney, Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) (1972). Acrylic on canvas. 213.36 x 304.8 cm. © David Hockney. Photo: Art Gallery of New South Wales / Jenni Carter.
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