David Hockney is now 87. Before A Bigger Splash (1967), Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy (1970–71), and Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) (1972), he was a student in London in the early 1960s, painting bohemian scenes of friends and lovers, often set in cramped bedsits, smoky cafés, and the gritty streets of postwar Soho. His style veered between figuration and abstraction, and his influences were wide-ranging—Jean Dubuffet, Francis Bacon, and Pablo Picasso among them. Coinciding with Hockney’s largest retrospective to date, just a train ride away at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, this exhibition presents early works that exploring sexuality. They were painted at a time when it was still illegal to be gay in England.
—Elena Clavarino