![]() All represent a view over a swimming pool towards a section of low-slung, 1960s modernist architecture in the background. They share compositional characteristics with the later version. The Splash (private collection) and A Little Splash (private collection) were both completed in 1966. A Bigger Splash is the largest and most striking of three ‘splash’ paintings. The background is taken from a drawing he had made of Californian buildings. The image is derived in part from a photograph Hockney discovered in a book on the subject of building swimming pools. At the same time, he discovered fast-drying acrylic paint to be more suited to portraying the sun-lit, clean-contoured suburban landscapes of California than slow drying oil paint.Ī Bigger Splash was painted between April and June 1967 when Hockney was teaching at the University of California at Berkeley. At this time he also began to leave wide borders around the paintings unpainted, a practice developed from his earlier style of keeping large areas of the canvas raw. While his later swimming pools were based on photographs, in the mid 1960s Hockney’s depiction of water in swimming pools was consciously derived from the influences of his contemporary, the British painter Bernard Cohen (born 1933), and the later abstract paintings by French artist Jean Dubuffet (1901-85). ![]() Picture of a Hollywood Swimming Pool 1964 (private collection) was completed in England from a drawing. His first painted reference to a swimming pool is in the painting California Art Collector 1964 (private collection). In each of the paintings he attempted a different solution to the representation of the constantly changing surface of water. Between 19 he made numerous paintings of swimming pools. Because of the climate, they could be used all year round and were not considered a luxury, unlike in Britain where it is too cold for most of the year. ) In California, Hockney discovered, everybody had a swimming pool. When I arrived I had no idea if there was any kind of artistic life there and that was the least of my worries.’ (Quoted in Kinley. He commented: ‘the climate is sunny, the people are less tense than in New York. He was drawn to California by the relaxed and sensual way of life. In 1976 he made a final trip back to Los Angeles and set up permanent home there. He returned there in 1964 and remained, with only intermittent trips to Europe, until 1968 when he came back to London. Hockney first visited Los Angeles in 1963, a year after graduating from the Royal College of Art, London. This painting depicts a splash in a Californian swimming pool.
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