David Hockney: Tate Britain to chart 'unique' artist's six-decade career

Major exhibition opening in February next year will be the world's most extensive retrospective of the British artist

David Hockney with ‘Card Player #3’, left, and ‘Bigger Card Players’ at an exhibition in 2015 (Getty)

Tate Britain is to stage the world’s most extensive retrospective of David Hockney, described by the gallery as “unique in British art for the extent of his popular appeal”.

The major exhibition, which opens in February next year, offers an “unprecedented” view of the Bradford-born artist’s work in painting, drawing, print, photography and video, and will show some of his most iconic works.

It will cover the artist’s six-decade career chronologically, tracing his art from his first appearance on the public stage as a student in 1961, through iconic works in the following decades to the recent show at the Royal Academy.

Tate Britain said: “The exhibition will show Hockney as an intelligent and profound interrogator of the essence of art. Over six decades he has questioned the nature of pictures and picture-making and challenged their conventions. His art is one of the great landmarks of post-modernism, using parody and self-reflection, and playing with representation and artifice.”

Hockney, 79, said he had enjoyed looking through art he had made throughout his life. “It has been a pleasure to revisit works I made decades ago, including some of my earliest paintings. Many of them seem like old friends to me now,” he said.

“We’re looking back over a lifetime with this exhibition, and I hope, like me, people will enjoy seeing how the roots of my new and recent work can be seen in the developments over the years.”

The exhibition will open on 9 February next year.