220 for 20202

Spilt Ink with Tests, Self-Portrait in My Living Room
Two Chairs and Rain on Window, My Second Drawing of Beauvron-en-Auge

The complete series comprising four iPad drawings in colors
Medium: inkjet print on archival paper
Year: 2020
Image: 13 x 36.4 inches (33 x 92.5 cm)
Sheet: 18 x 40.4 inches (45.7 x 102.6 cm)
Edition: 100
Artist’s Proofs: 10 (numbered in Roman numerals)
Publishers: The artist and Taschen, Berlin

To accompany the Art Edition of 220 for 2020 in 2 volumes
Contained in teal clamshell box with stamped title
One clothbound with illustrated cover and tipped in illustrations
Book: 12.7 x 17.1 inches (31.2 x 43.6 cm)
The second with stamped title and facsimile sketches
Book: 7.8 x 11 inches (19.8 x 28 cm)

Each signed, dated, and numbered in pencil and with the Artist’s blindstamp in the margin

Published by Taschen, 220 for 2020 collects many of the drawings that David Hockney made on his iPad while on Covid-19 lockdown in Normandy. “I began drawing the winter trees on a new iPad,” Hockney recalls, “I went on drawing the winter trees that eventually burst into blossom…Meanwhile, the virus is going mad, and many people said my drawings were a great respite from what was going on.” As he continued creating these drawings from life, Hockney set the goal to complete 220 new drawings in 2020, which he achieved. He titled one such work Do Remember They Can’t Cancel The Spring, which would become a major touchstone of hope for people experiencing the isolation of quarantine and social distancing worldwide. Collectively, the works gathered in 220 for 2020 are both an ode to a landscape beloved by Hockney and a testament to finding hope in nature’s persistence through even the darkest moments.

1. Split Ink with Tests

2. Self-Portrait in my Living Room

3. Two Chairs and Rain on Window

4. My Second Drawing of Beauvron-en-Auge

Championed for his relentless exploration of artistic media, David Hockney has challenged and transformed the conventions of picture-making through his painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, and, more recently, computer and iPad drawing. Locked down in Normandy at the beginning of COVID, Hockney used his iPad to spontaneously depict his impressions of the surrounding landscape and changing seasons. Created en plein air, the 220 iPad paintings Hockney created were compiled and co-published by TASCHEN in 2021 as a deluxe artist’s book with tipped-in illustrations. The Art Edition, with accompanying signed Hockney prints, is sold out.

“I set out to do the arrival of spring in 2020 because I hadn’t managed to do it in 2019 for various reasons, that had been my original plan. I started with the winter trees, which are needed to show how the blossom arrives with a tiny bit first and then they grow, and then the pinks come out and then the leaves, small at first and then they grow, and the blossom falls off and the pinks develop into fruit. This to my knowledge had never been done by anyone before me (not even Monet). I first attempted this in 2011 in East Yorkshire when I was living in Bridlington.”

“I think one of the reasons it had never been attempted before is the speed with which it happens (about three weeks after the first hints of blossom), and that oil painting out of doors requires quite a lot of equipment. The iPad, which was very new in 2011, seemed a perfect new medium. For instance, I began in February when it is still very cold in Normandy, and so I drove out in our Toyota truck looking for subjects. To oil-paint them I would have had to get out of the truck, set up a table and chair and then an easel. All this in temperatures almost freezing – the heavy coat I would have needed working every single day out there would have put most artists off.”

“Instead the iPad was the only equipment I needed and the truck could be heated since at 83 I felt the cold. I drove all over our four-acre piece of property. I knew the trees much better than I did in 2019. I knew which was a pear tree, which was a cherry and apple and plum. I could drive very close into the trees, and draw I did. I never used photographs because they can’t show space. I made about 110 pictures in 90 days and then I thought I’d finished. I slowed down for a bit, but then I continued, realizing the summer was now here and would last for three months before the leaves would begin to change again.”

“Then I started drawing from further away, the long shot rather than the close-up. It was still very exciting for me and I realized I should go on and do the whole year of 2020 (twenty twenty, it’s common knowledge that in the English language the battle of Hastings took place in ten sixty six 1066, so a thousand years later will be twenty sixty six 2066). In the end I made 220 paintings for 2020 and this book shows them, with another four as a bonus.”

“Later on in January 2021 I used quite a few of these paintings to make a very long frieze that shows the whole year in Normandy, but that is another exhibition and another book.”

– David Hockney, 9^th September 2021

Auction Results

1. Single Drawings

Phillips London: 17 January 2024
Estimated: GBP 20,000 – 30,000
GBP 17,780 / USD 22,458

Phillips London: 21 September 2023
Estimated: GBP 15,000 – 20,000
GBP 24,130

LA Modern: 7 September 2023
Estimated: USD 30,000 – 50,000
USD 35,280

Seoul Auction: 30 May 2023
Estimated: KRW 35,000,000 – 55,000,000
KRW 35,000,000 / USD 26,530 (HAMMER)

DAVID HOCKNEY
Art Edition No. 201–300 ‘Two Chairs and Rain on Window’ from 220 for 2020, 2019
11-color inkjet print on cotton-fiber archival paper
Print: Edition 68/100
Book: Edition 72/2020

2. Complete Sets

Sotheby’s New-York: 3 October 2022
Estimated: USD 70,000 – 100,000
USD 113,400

DAVID HOCKNEY (B. 1937)
220 for 2020, 2020
The complete series comprising four iPad drawings in colors
Four inkjet prints on archival paper
Each signed, dated, and numbered 23/100 in pencil
Contained in the original teal portfolios to accompany the Art Edition of 220 for 2020