Presented at Serpentine North from 12th March to 23rd August 2026, the exhibition will showcase seminal works, shown in the UK for the first time. Admission will be free to the exhibition which is the artist’s first at Serpentine.
A major exhibition of more than 400 of the artist’s works from 1955 to 2025 closed its doors last Sunday at Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris featuring international, institutional, and private collections’ works, as well as paintings from the artist’s own studio. The exhibition – curated at David Hockney’s request by Sir Norman Rosenthal, the former Exhibitions Secretary of London’s Royal Academy of Arts, in close collaboration with Suzanne Pagé, Artistic Director of Fondation Louis Vuitton, and her team brought together works in a variety of media including oil and acrylic painting, ink, pencil and charcoal drawing, digital art (iPhone, iPad, and computer drawings), immersive video installation and photographic drawing. Spanning seven decades of groundbreaking creativity, David Hockney 25 highlighted not only Hockney’s iconic early works but also places a special focus on the past 25 years, the early part of the 21st century, which has inspired the event’s title.
David Hockney said: “I’m excited to present an exhibition at Serpentine in 2026.”
While the world came in the Spring of 2020, Hockney produced over a hundred images on his iPad within just a few weeks. Working digitally lets him capture the essence of each scene quickly and precisely. Much like the Impressionists, Hockney skilfully records changes in light and weather, but uses a vivid, radiant palette. His compositions combine flat areas of bold colour with playful pop-like touches. As the days pass, lockdown lifts, and spring transitions into summer, then autumn and winter. Hockney didn’t stop at painting spring, he captured the whole cycle of the year.
The exhibition will include Hockney’s recent works: the celebrated Moon Room which reflects his lifelong interest in the cycle of light and time passing. It will also feature digital paintings from his Sunrise body of work.
A Year in Normandy, a ninety-metre-long frieze, inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry, showing the change of seasons at the artist’s former studio in Normandy, will also feature in the show.
David Hockney is interested in how art and technology can come together in new ways. Recommending that people slow down and notice the beauty of the world around them, he believes that simple, everyday beauty, like a sunrise, is worth celebrating.
Image: A Year in Normandie (detail), 2020-2021, composite iPad painting © David Hockney
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