In the spring of 2020, as the Covid-19 virus was “going mad”, David Hockney kept himself busy by painting winter trees bursting into blossom in his Normandy garden. “Many people said my drawings were a great respite from what was going on,” Britain’s pre-eminent living artist said at the time.
Citizens of the post-pandemic world, with its rollercoaster of conflict, rightwing populism, climate crisis and techno-revolution, may still be in need of Hockney’s respite by next spring. They will find it at an exhibition of his extraordinary 90-metre frieze, A Year in Normandy, and other works at the Serpentine gallery in London.
The free exhibition is likely to draw thousands of fans of the 88-year-old artist, adored for his vibrant images, bluff Yorkshire manner and defiant advocacy of smoking.
The show will be mounted in the same year as the Bayeux tapestry – cited by Hockney as an inspiration for his frieze, and described by the artist as “one of the oldest and most remarkable artworks” – comes to London for the first time in nearly 1,000 years in a cultural exchange with France.
Hockney moved to Normandy, the home of the Bayeux tapestry, in late 2019, and began producing images of winter trees on his iPad. “Then this virus started …” he told the BBC in the spring of 2020.
He sent images to his friends, and publicly released one of daffodils, titled: Do Remember They Can’t Cancel the Spring. “Why are my iPad drawings seen as a respite from the news? Well, they are obviously made by the hand depicting the renewal that is the spring in this part of the world.”
He added: “We have lost touch with nature rather foolishly as we are a part of it, not outside it. This will in time be over and then what? What have we learned?”
Hockney joined together all 220 pictures of the changing seasons into one continuous frieze. “The viewer will walk past it like the Bayeux tapestry, and I hope they will experience in one picture the year in Normandy,” he said.
Hockney was born in Bradford in 1937, the son of a devout Methodist mother and a socialist activist, first world war conscientious objector father. He decided at the age of 11 he wanted to be an artist, and studied at the Bradford School of Art and the Royal College of Art in London.
In the 1960s he produced some of the works that he is still famous for: swimming pools, palm trees, blue skies and beautiful people in Los Angeles. He has always embraced different media, and much of his recent work has been produced on an iPad.
This year, the largest ever Hockney exhibition, of more than 400 images spanning 70 years, was hosted in Paris to rave reviews. It closes on Monday.
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Bettina Korek and Hans Ulrich Obrist of the Serpentine said they were thrilled that Hockney had agreed to the exhibition, which “promises to be a landmark cultural moment”.
The exhibition will also include Hockney’s celebrated Moon Room, which reflects his interest in the cycle of light and time passing, and will feature digital paintings from his Sunrise body of work.
The exhibition will close just weeks before the Bayeux tapestry, depicting the 1066 conquest of England by William the Conqueror, goes on show at the British Museum in London.
Experts have said that the tapestry is too fragile to be moved, and more than 60,000 people have signed a petition urging Emmanuel Macron, the French president, to reverse his “catastrophic” decision to agree to the loan.
David Hockney: A Year in Normandy will be at Serpentine North from 12 March until 23 August 2026