David Hockney — A Year in Normandie at Serpentine
- May 29
- 2 min read
Updated: Jun 5
Location: Serpentine North, Kensington Gardens, London
Date: March 12 – August 23, 2026
Project: A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts about Painting, new paintings and the monumental iPad frieze shown in London for the first time
Why it Matters: Hockney's first exhibition at Serpentine. He's 88 and still painting every day
David Hockney has never shown at Serpentine before. The exhibition has two parts. The first is ten new acrylic paintings: five still lifes and five portraits of people close to him, family and carers. They all share the same frontal composition and the same gingham tablecloth. Hockney has been thinking about the line between figurative and abstract for decades, and these paintings are where that thinking is right now. For him, all figurative painting is abstract the moment it lands on a flat surface.
The second part is A Year in Normandie (2020–2021), a monumental frieze made from over a hundred iPad paintings. It wraps around the perimeter gallery and follows the seasons at his former studio in Normandy. He made it during lockdown, working fast, painting on his iPad the way the Impressionists painted outdoors. The format comes from Chinese scroll paintings and the Bayeux Tapestry. Spring turns into summer, summer into autumn, autumn into winter. It hasn't been shown in London before.
Outside, there's a large-scale printed mural in the garden at Serpentine North, a tree house scene from the spring cycle of the frieze, placed where the gallery meets the park. Hockney also has a new commission at Turner Contemporary in Margate: a seven-by-ten-metre work transforming the Sunley Window, on view April 1 to November 1.
The catalogue is designed by Hockney himself, with texts by Marco Livingstone and Olivia Laing, and a conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist.
More info: serpentinegalleries.org
