Pembroke Studio Interior
from Moving Focus

Medium: Lithograph printed in colors on TGL handmade paper, in the original artist’s frame
Year: 1984
Sheet approx.: 40 1/4 x 49 1/4 inches (102.2 x 125.2 cm)
Framed: 46 3/8 x 55 inches (117.8 x 139.7 cm)
Edition: 70
Artist’s Proofs: 18 (numbered in Roman numerals)
Publisher: Tyler Graphics Ltd., Bedford, New York
Literature: Tyler Graphics (277), Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (262)

Signed, dated and numbered in pencil with the printer’s and publisher’s blindstamp

Executed in 1984, Pembroke Studio Interior, from the Moving Focus series, depicts the artist’s studio in vivid, primary colours decorated with bright green armchairs, irregular red floorboards and a yellow easel. Rendered in bold crayon-like lines, the studio space is constructed using multiple viewpoints, allowing the viewer to experience the space in its fullness. By adopting reverse perspective, Hockney achieves a dynamic representation of space on a two-dimensional surface, clearly inspired by Picasso’s study of perspective. Transcending the strictures of traditional single point perspective and challenging the conventional canons of composition, Pembroke Studio Interior is a remarkable example of Hockney’s revolutionary depiction of space and his fascination with color and line.

Giovanni di Paolo, The Annunciation and Expulsion from Paradise, c. 1435, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. Image: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1939.1.223

For Hockney, single-point perspective is a limited, constrictive way of communicating our experience of the world around us, which he likens to “looking at the world from the point of view of a paralyzed Cyclops – for a split second.” Drawing inspiration from the Cubism of Picasso’s 1980 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, for Moving Focus, Hockney embraced a pictorial structure that could accommodate multiple viewpoints and perspectives as well as time and movement. In the present lot, the single point perspective of the Renaissance tradition, visible in many Annunciation scenes from the era, is turned on its head. Instead, the use of reverse perspective and multiple viewpoints create a dynamic and striking composition.

“A view from sitting still, from a stationary point, is not the way you usually see landscape; you are always moving through it. If you put a vanishing point anywhere, it means you’ve stopped. In a way, you’re hardly there.”

Shortly after moving to California, in the mid-1960s, David Hockney began his working relationship with master printer Kenneth Tyler. Working with Tyler in all four of his workshops, Hockney found a joyous freedom in the variety of mark-making he could develop and explore through lithography. It was with Tyler that Hockney embarked on his ambitious Moving Focus series, where he dove into his enduring concern with the construction of images, the complexities of space, and the assembly of multiple perspectives. The result was a body of work which remains his largest and most pioneering series of color lithographs, comprising 29 prints of interior views and chairs, exterior views of a Mexican hotel, and portraits of some of his most well-known sitters including Celia Birtwell and Gregory Evans.

Source: Phillips

Auction Results

Phillips London: 21 September 2023
Estimated: GBP 40,000 – 60,000
GBP 82,550 / USD 101,760

Sotheby’s New-York: 28 October 2022
Estimated: USD 40,000 – 60,000
USD 113,400
AUCTION RECORD FOR PEMBROKE STUDIO INTERIOR

DAVID HOCKNEY (b. 1937)
Pembroke Studio Interior, from Moving Focus
Lithograph printed in colors on TGL handmade paper, in the original artist’s frame
Signed in pencil, dated and inscribed AP XII/XVIII
This impression is one of 18 artist’s proofs aside from the numbered edition of 70

XXXXXXXXXX

Christie’s New-York: 3 December 2020
Estimated: USD 25,000 – 35,000
USD 65,000

DAVID HOCKNEY (b. 1937)
Pembroke Studio Interior, 1984
Lithograph printed in colors on TGL handmade paper in painted artist’s frame
Signed and dated ‘David Hockney 84′ (lower right); numbered ’26/70’ (lower left)

Phillips New-York: 22 October 2020
Estimated: USD 10,000 – 15,000
USD 50,400

DAVID HOCKNEY
Pembroke Studio Interior, from Moving Focus Series, 1984
Lithograph in colors, on TGL handmade paper, the full sheet
Contained in the original hand painted artist’s frame (as issued)
Signed, dated and numbered 4/70 in pencil