David Hockney, Path Through Wheat Field, July, 2005. Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale, London.
When we think of Marino Marini, what likely comes to mind is his position as one of the most well-known Italian sculptors of the 20th century. Though his emblematic sculptures of the horse and rider motif are instantly recognizable in public and art spaces worldwide, Marini was adventurous in his choice of medium, turning his thematically focused practice toward painting, printmaking, and engraving throughout his life.
Similarly, David Hockney has also cultivated a much deeper and more varied practice than a casual viewer may realize. Though known for Pop-influenced portraits and his superlative draughtsmanship, Hockney excelled in his pursuit of landscape oil painting en plein air, particularly in his 21st-century depictions of his native Yorkshire landscape.
Considering Hockney and Marini together in two works on offer at Phillips’ upcoming Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale in London, we discover several curious resonances between them. Each approaches a very personal subject to the artist and one they explored in series. For David Hockney, his ongoing exploration of the seasons’ impact on the landscape so closely tied to childhood memories is a deeply personal expression, just as the symbol of the horse and its associations with strength, power, mortality, and war is so deeply tied to Marini’s Etruscan heritage.
Marino Marini, Il Cavaliere Azzurro (The Blue Rider), 1952–1954. Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale, London.
Executed in the years after Marini’s award-winning presentation at the 1952 Venice Biennale, Il Cavaliere Azzurro (The Blue Rider) sees the artist explore a characteristic theme from a triumphant point in his career. The charged nature of Marini’s depictions of this motif stems from his experiences in early life. Encountering horses and riders as a child in his native Tuscany, Marini later compared the sight of this harmonious and balanced interaction as a symbol of the equilibrium between humans and the natural world — a balance he sensed was becoming lost to modernity. As such, this remarkably energetic work combines movement, form, texture, and color to present one of art history’s oldest themes in a decidedly modern context. Marini pulls from the ancient, iconographic Etruscan sources of this motif in a painting that encompasses the timeless struggle of man to harness and control the power of horses — an apt analogy for our continued struggle to contain the uncontrollable forces of modernity.
Depictions of horses are among humanity’s earliest expressions and fit into a tradition that stretches back to prehistoric cave paintings. Indeed, exploring the works on offer this October in London, we also discover German artist Daniel Richter’s White Horse - Pink Flag — a work that depicts a struggle between two horses. In contrast with Marini’s painting, here we can consider this a depiction of a battle between two uncontrollable forces rather than our collective struggle against one. Fitting within Richter’s overtly political practice, we can also find a surprising comparison here. For Marini, much of his work’s intent stems from Europe’s cultural reckoning following the Second World War, and for Richter, his background in the underground East German Punk scene, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the terrorist attacks in the United States on 11 September, serve as anchor points that inform his view of the world.
Daniel Richter, White Horse - Pink Flag, 2004. Modern & Contemporary Art Day Sale, London.
Both Marini and Hockney's childhood connections to their subject matter are palpable in these works. But for David Hockney in particular, Path Through Wheat Field, July represents a homecoming as he took to working outdoors, recording the passing seasons’ impact on his native landscape. In this completely fresh-to-market work, we find a prodigious and masterful artist returning to the subject that filled his childhood imagination, opening his mature eyes to an environment that had lived in his memory for more than 60 years.
David Hockney, Path Through Wheat Field, July, 2005. Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale, London.
In this important early example of Hockney’s Yorkshire landscape oil paintings we can see how the artist translated the lessons learned in his panoramic Californian landscapes into this new body of work. The skills honed by the artist in recreating California’s intense colors and spatial depth introduce a vibrance and glow to the golden fields and lush greens of the Wolds, illustrating the artist’s deeply personal connection to the place.
As he approached 60 Hockney started to make more frequent return visits to Bridlington in East Yorkshire, called back by the bonds of family and friendship. At this time, the artist rediscovered the wonder of his childhood environment, recalling the summers he spent working the fields and riding his bicycle through the winding paths, where he caught sight of intense vistas. Though the strong physical and emotional presence of the Yorkshire Wolds never really left him, there’s such a poignant intimacy that we can glean from his artistic return late in life.
Hockney’s shift to a more traditional mode of landscape painting places this work directly within a lineage of artists who found specific pictorial challenges and rewards in their immediate surroundings. One thinks immediately of Vincent van Gogh, but glancing around this auction’s preview in our London gallery, we also find a strong resonance between Path Through Wheat Field, July and Etel Adnan’s Jardins 5.
Etel Adnan, Jardins 5, 2018. Modern & Contemporary Art Day Sale, London.
Beyond the obvious coloristic associations, in Hockney and Adnan, we find two artists with strong childhood relationships to their native landscape — one that each artist left to eventually settle in California. Regardless of where these two artists work, Hockney’s memories of his native Yorkshire and Adnan’s of her native Lebanon impact how they observe and depict their surroundings. Ultimately, across all these works, we find ways that an artist’s forward-thinking ideas exist in a conversation with their own past, and we discover new ways to open our minds to the exciting connections we can find between them.
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