DAVID HOCKNEY
“A bigger splash”, 1967
oil on canvas, 242-243 cm. -London, Tate Gallery
www.tate.org.uk © David Hockney
David Hockney is one of the living myths of the Pop Art . Born in Great Britain , he moves to California , where he feels immediately identified with the light, the culture and the urban landscape of the State. “A bigger splash” is possibly his most famous work, and also one of his most audacious, if we consider the difficulty of painting an event –the splash- that lasts a few seconds. Hockney himself explained this with these words: “It took me two weeks to paint an event that lasts two seconds”.
“A bigger splash” transfers us to a calm sunny day in California, with a magnificent mastery of the light that even suggest us seeing the painting through good sunglasses. Hockney places us next to a swimming pool, in the middle of a calm composition composed solely with horizontal and vertical lines, with the exception of the diagonal formed by the springboard. The artist has caught the precise moment in which a personage that we cannot see jumps into the water, forming a great splash that momentarily breaks the almost sacred calm of the scene. We can almost hear the exuberant sound of the splash while the smooth and fresh marine breeze runs by our back.
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