David Hockney Homage to Picasso For Sale
Homage to Picasso
David Hockney
Limited Edition of 90
David Hockney's "Homage to Picasso" series stands as one of the most significant tributes ever rendered by one modern master to another. Created in 1973, this limited edition suite of works represents Hockney's profound artistic dialogue with Pablo Picasso—a conversation that would continue throughout his career and fundamentally shape his approach to representation, space, and the very nature of seeing.
Produced in a strictly limited edition of 90, these works emerged during a pivotal moment in Hockney's artistic development. By 1973, the British artist had already established himself as one of the most celebrated figures of his generation, known for his luminous California swimming pool paintings and incisive double portraits. Yet Hockney remained perpetually restless, constantly seeking new modes of visual expression. His encounter with Picasso's revolutionary approach to pictorial space—particularly the Cubist master's radical fragmentation and simultaneous viewpoints—opened transformative possibilities that Hockney would explore for decades to come.
The suite includes "The Student," a work that exemplifies Hockney's sophisticated engagement with Picasso's legacy. Rather than producing mere pastiche or slavish imitation, Hockney created works that honor Picasso's innovations while remaining unmistakably his own. The bold, confident line work that defines these pieces demonstrates Hockney's exceptional draftsmanship—a quality that has consistently distinguished his graphic work and earned comparison to the great printmakers throughout art history. Christie's has noted that Hockney's prints from this period represent "some of the most accomplished graphic work of the twentieth century," with the artist's technical mastery serving his conceptual ambitions with remarkable precision.
What makes the "Homage to Picasso" series particularly compelling is its intellectual sophistication. Hockney does not simply borrow Picasso's formal vocabulary; he interrogates it, extending and personalizing the Spanish master's investigations into how we perceive and represent reality. The Cubist fragmentation of space that Picasso pioneered—showing multiple perspectives simultaneously, collapsing time into a single image—finds new expression in Hockney's distinctive visual language. These works anticipate the artist's later photographic collages and his revolutionary experiments with multiple-canvas paintings, revealing how this early engagement with Picasso's ideas planted seeds that would flourish throughout Hockney's career.
The reinvention of portraiture stands central to both artists' practices, and in this series, Hockney pays particular attention to how Picasso liberated the portrait from conventional representation. Where traditional portraiture sought to capture a single, fixed likeness, Picasso demonstrated that a face could be shown from multiple angles simultaneously, that emotional truth might be conveyed through formal distortion, that the subject's psychological complexity could be rendered visible through fragmented planes and shifting perspectives. Hockney absorbed these lessons deeply, and the "Homage to Picasso" works reveal his nuanced understanding of how these techniques could serve expressive purposes beyond mere formal experimentation.
The year 1973 held particular significance for this project. Picasso died on April 8th of that year, lending Hockney's tribute an unexpected elegiac quality. What had begun as an artistic conversation became, in effect, a memorial—a younger artist's acknowledgment of an immense debt to a master whose physical presence had now departed the world, even as his artistic influence remained inescapable. Sotheby's has observed that works created in immediate response to Picasso's death carry particular art historical weight, representing a moment when the contemporary art world collectively reckoned with the void left by the twentieth century's most dominant figure.
The limited edition of 90 ensures that these works remain genuinely rare within Hockney's extensive print oeuvre. As the artist's market has reached unprecedented heights—with paintings selling for record figures and prints commanding increasingly significant prices at auction—early, conceptually substantial works like the "Homage to Picasso" suite have attracted considerable collector interest. These pieces offer not merely aesthetic pleasure but insight into the intellectual foundations of one of the most important artistic careers of our time.
Hockney's ongoing relevance—his continued experimentation with iPad drawings, his monumental landscape paintings, his innovative multi-screen video installations—can be traced in part to the artistic courage he developed through his engagement with Picasso's example. The Spanish master demonstrated that an artist need never settle into comfortable repetition, that reinvention was not only possible but necessary for sustained creative vitality. The "Homage to Picasso" series documents the moment when Hockney most explicitly acknowledged this lesson, creating works that simultaneously honor the past and point toward future possibilities.
For collectors seeking works that combine historical significance, aesthetic accomplishment, and investment potential, the "Homage to Picasso" series represents an exceptional opportunity. These prints stand at the intersection of two towering artistic legacies, offering tangible evidence of the creative dialogue between masters that drives art history forward.
Guy Hepner is pleased to offer works from David Hockney's "Homage to Picasso" series. For availability, pricing, and acquisition inquiries, please contact our New York gallery directly. Our specialists are available to provide additional information, condition reports, and provenance documentation for serious collectors.
