A Bigger Splash

Southern California, not East Yorkshire*

David Hockney painted A Bigger Splash in early 1967 whilst teaching at Berkeley. It captured a typical California day - a swimming pool, a cloudless blue sky, palm trees; a 'typical' day we could all get used to if we had to, I'm sure. The original, hanging in the Tate, measures 8 ft. by 8 ft. and is seen as a defining moment in Hockney's career. A contemporary of Peter Blake he was one of the key players in the whole Pop Art movement of the 1960s, but would soon outgrow any labels the art world tried to put on him and took his work in directions few could have second guessed: landscape, expressionism, portraiture, cubism and, of course, his iconic collage photography.

* Hockney has lived all over the world, including a number of years spent in a pile in Bridlington, East Yorkshire - which he sold in 2015. These days he spends much of his time in his beloved California.