'David Hockney 25:' The artist's largest exhibition opens in Paris, showcasing 400 works over seven decades

The largest exhibition of works by British artist David Hockney opened in Paris on Tuesday at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, showcasing over 400 pieces that span seven decades of his career. Titled "David Hockney 25," the exhibition focuses on the last quarter-century of Hockney's work, highlighting his innovative digital paintings created on iPads.

Co-curated by Hockney's friend Norman Rosenthal, the exhibition features some of Hockney's most iconic pieces, including "Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)" from 1972, which sold for $90 million in 2018—the highest price for a work by a living artist at the time. Rosenthal compared Hockney's impact to that of Picasso, noting the scale and imagination present in Hockney's oeuvre.

Many works in the exhibition are set in London, Yorkshire, and Normandy, reflecting the artist's time spent in these regions over the past two decades. Hockney expressed his pride in the exhibition, stating, “The show means an enormous amount to me because it is the largest I ever had... in the Fondation Louis Vuitton's great Parisian building, designed by my LA friend Frank Gehry.”

The exhibition includes the monumental 12-meter-wide painting "Bigger Trees Near Warter" from 2007, along with works from Hockney's California period in the 1970s, as well as numerous still lifes, landscapes, portraits, and self-portraits.

At 87 years old, Hockney is recognized as one of the most influential artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, having been a key figure in the Pop Art movement of the 1960s. He continues to reinvent familiar themes through new media and technologies. Bernard Arnault, President of the Fondation Louis Vuitton, praised Hockney's ability to evolve and guide others through their artistic journeys in his introduction to the exhibition.