Four Flowers in Still Life
Medium: Lithograph in colors on Arches 88 paper
Year: 1990
Image: 21×32 inches (53×81 cm)
Sheet: 27×38 inches (68.6 x 96.5 cm)
Edition: 50
Artist’s Proofs: 12 AP (numbered in Roman numerals)
Publisher: Tyler Graphics Ltd., Bedford, New York
Literature: Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (322)
Signed, dated and numbered in pencil with the publisher’s blindstamp
Four Flowers in Still Life presents itself, at first glance, as a playful arrangement of forms; yet, as is often the case with Hockney, what appears spontaneous is in fact rigorously constructed. The composition unfolds across a shallow, almost theatrical space where a deep blue vessel anchors the image, from which four stylized flowers emerge in sweeping, elastic curves. Their stems, rendered in a vivid, almost acidic green, snake through the composition with a sense of autonomy, as though liberated from botanical logic. The petals, reduced to bold yellow forms, punctuate the surface like visual exclamations.
The surrounding environment is anything but neutral. Hockney constructs a dynamic interior through a patchwork of competing textures: a gridded backdrop suggesting tiled walls or perspectival scaffolding; a red plane articulated with dense cross-hatching; and a sinuous, pink-and-white curtain-like form that folds into the composition with ornamental excess. These contrasting zones do not aim for illusionistic coherence but rather assert the flatness of the surface, in line with Hockney’s long-standing dialogue with both Cubism and Matisse. Space here is not described: it is invented.
Executed as a lithograph in colors and published by Tyler Graphics, this work belongs to a pivotal moment in Hockney’s printmaking practice. His collaboration with Kenneth Tyler’s workshop in the late 1980s and early 1990s represents one of the most technically ambitious periods of his career. Lithography, with its capacity for both precision and painterly fluidity, allowed Hockney to explore the tension between line and mass, spontaneity and control. The layering of colors in Four Flowers in Still Life is particularly sophisticated: each zone is meticulously separated, yet the overall effect remains vibrant and immediate, almost improvisational.
The still life, a genre historically associated with quiet contemplation and the passage of time, is here reimagined as something far more animated. Hockney does not simply depict flowers; he rethinks their presence within space. The objects are less observed than orchestrated, their exaggerated curves and improbable relationships transforming the traditional still life into a stage for formal experimentation. One senses the influence of Picasso in the fragmentation of space, but also Matisse in the joyous embrace of pattern and color as autonomous forces.
What ultimately distinguishes this work is its refusal of hierarchy. No single element dominates: the vase, the flowers, the background, and the decorative motifs all compete and collaborate simultaneously. The eye moves restlessly across the surface, guided not by perspective but by rhythm. In this sense, Four Flowers in Still Life is less about representation than about perception itself—how we construct visual reality from fragments, patterns, and color.
In Four Flowers in Still Life, Hockney offers a quietly radical proposition: that even the most traditional subject can be endlessly reinvented through the language of form. The result is a work that feels at once deeply rooted in art history and unmistakably contemporary: an elegant, almost mischievous meditation on how we see, and how we might see differently.
Auction Results
Freeman’s: 24 April 2026
Estimated: USD 8,000 – 12,000
USD 28,800
DAVID HOCKNEY (British, b. 1937)
Four Flowers in Still Life (MCAT 322), 1990
Lithograph in colors on Arches paper
Signed, dated, and numbered 15/50 in pencil
Published by Tyler Graphics Ltd., Bedford, New York, with their blindstamp
Phillips London: 7 June 2017
Estimated: GBP 6,000 – 8,000
GBP 11,250 / USD 14,555
DAVID HOCKNEY
Four Flowers in Still Life, 1990
Lithograph in colors on Arches paper
Signed, dated and numbered 31/50 in pencil
Christie’s New-York: 1 March 2016
Estimated: USD 7,000 – 10,000
USD 16,250
DAVID HOCKNEY (B. 1937)
Four Flowers in Still Life, 1990
Lithograph in colors on Arches 88 paper
Signed and dated in pencil, numbered 5/50
Christie’s New-York: 24 April 2014
Estimated: USD 6,000 – 8,000
USD 10,625
DAVID HOCKNEY (b. 1937)
Four Flowers in Still Life, 1990
Lithograph in colors on Arches 88 paper
Signed and dated in pencil, numbered 4/50
Christie’s London: 19 March 2014
Estimated: GBP 4,000 – 6,000
GBP 8,125 / USD 13,515
DAVID HOCKNEY (b. 1937)
Four Flowers in Still Life, 1990
Lithograph in colors on Arches 88 paper
Signed and dated in pencil, numbered 3/50
Christie’s New-York: 30 October 2013
Estimated: USD 6,000 – 8,000
USD 10,000
DAVID HOCKNEY (b. 1937)
Four Flowers in Still Life, 1990
Lithograph in colors on Arches 88 paper
Signed and dated in pencil, numbered ‘AP XI/XII’
An artist’s proof edition was 50