Hockney studied at Bradford School of Art and the Royal College of Art. He first gained attention and national fame even before he graduated from the Royal College in 1962. During his time at the RCA Hockney won a gold medal and the Guinness award for Etching in 1961. He was awarded a prize in the junior section of the John Moores Liverpool Exhibition in 1961 and in the Graphics Section of the Paris Biennale in 1963. Exhibited as a pop artist with a one-man show at the Kasmin Gallery in 1963. He was given a retrospective exhibition of Paintings, Prints and Drawings 1960-70 at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1970. Hockney has been perpetually in the limelight and has gained a reputation for his success in drawings, witty etchings, double portraits and inventive photo collages. A major retrospective covering all aspects of his work was held at Tate Britain in 2017.
David Hockney, OM CH RA (b. 1937), Stephen Spender, 1981
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Pen on paper, 14 x 17 in (35.5 x 43.2 cm)
Dedicated For Stephen sorry I tore the corner off by mistake love David x
(Verso) Extensively annotated in the artist’s handwriting
Collections: A gift from the artist to the sitter; Thence by descent to Lizzie Spender who gave the drawing to John Sutherland in 2010
Sir Stephen Spender CBE (1909 – 1995) the English poet and novelist came to the fore alongside W.H Auden and Christopher Isherwood in the 1930’s. His most famous poem An Elementary School Classroom in a slum reflects his concerns with social injustice and the class struggle. This drawing was done on a stop-over at Tokyo airport when Spender was travelling with Hockney to China to collaborate on a travel book China Diary which was published in 1982. Spender and Hockney became close friends and worked together again on Hockney’s Alphabet published in 1989. Spender writes that at the time he was drawn by Hockney he was ‘’saturated with exhaustion like a sponge with water’’.
Spender’s daughter Lizzie gave the drawing to her father’s biographer John Sutherland.