David Hockney: A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts about Painting
One of the most influential artists of our time, David Hockney invites viewers to slow down and notice the extraordinary within the everyday in his first exhibition at Serpentine. Created specifically for this presentation, Hockney’s new paintings extend his lifelong fascination with the act of looking, affirming his belief that simple beauty is worth celebrating.
The exhibition is conceived in close collaboration with the artist and brings Hockney’s celebrated panoramic frieze A Year in Normandie to London for the first time. Inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry, this monumental work captures the changing seasons at the artist’s former studio in Normandy. In the context of the exhibition at Serpentine, it opens a dialogue with the surrounding nature of Kensington Gardens.
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
David Hockney (b. 1937 in Bradford, Yorkshire, UK) is one of the most influential artists of our time. Throughout his seven-decade spanning career, the British artist remains endlessly inventive and committed to celebrating the world around him, epitomised by his signature phrase, “Love Life.” A deep fascination with perspective and a desire to investigate how we see and represent the world led him to explore a range of artistic mediums from painting to photographic collages, set design, drawing and printmaking. Hockney’s use of new technology is an extension of his interest in different modes of capturing reality. From his Polaroid composites to fax machine drawings and, in recent years, his iPad paintings, he seeks to unlock the potential of each technology for the creation of art.
David Hockney’s work has been presented in major solo exhibitions in institutions worldwide, including Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (2025); Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (2023); Tate Britain, Centre Pompidou and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2017), among many others. David Hockney has been honoured with many prestigious awards, including his recognition as a Companion of Honour from the British and Commonwealth Order for his outstanding achievement in the arts in 1997. He recently received the Officier in France’s Légion d’Honneur award (2026). David Hockney’s work is part of numerous public collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; the Art Institute of Chicago; the National Portrait Gallery, London; Tate Britain, London; the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.
