“Water, the idea of drawing water, is always appealing to me... You can look on it, through it, into it, see it as volume, see it as surface...the idea of representing it has always rather fascinated me and I keep going back to it”

—David Hockney

Considered Britain’s most successful living artist, for David Hockney it is the swimming pool motif that has become a symbol of his worldwide acclaim. Hockney’s obsession with pools originated in 1964, when the artist first travelled from post-war London to sunny Los Angeles. While flying over the southern Californian city, the artist noticed a multitude of swimming pools dotted across the land. Hockney recalled: “As we flew in over Los Angeles I looked down to see blue swimming pools all over, and I realized that a swimming pool in England would have been a luxury, whereas here they are not, because of the climate.” Born in a working-class family in Northern England, Hockney found in Los Angeles the land of the American Dream, and swimming pools soon appeared to him as a socio-economic emblem through which he visually defined the utopian-like city.

Water and, in particular, its inherent connection to light, has been an endless source of fascination for artists. Hockney made numerous acrylic paintings of swimming pools between the 1960s and 1970s and continued to return to the motif in various media. In the late 1970s, encouraged by his close friend, the master printmaker Kenneth Tyler, the artist turned to lithography to address the technical challenge of depicting water’s ever-shifting surface.  Completed in 1980, Pool Made with Paper Blue Ink, from Paper Pools, presents dynamic blue gestures that evoke the water’s constant movement and variations in color. The interlocking cross-hatch overlaid with flowing blue brush marks strikingly conveys the depth of the pool and the energetic motion of the water’s surface. A diving board projects out at a diagonal angle, echoing the modernist cantilevers of Los Angeles’ architecture and contrasting with the vibrant colors of the swimming pool below. The diving board’s bold shadow, which wobbles as it enters the pool, conveys the dazzling sunlight of this poolside scene.

Printed by Tyler Graphics, Pool Made with Paper Blue Ink for Book attests to the close creative relationship between Hockney and Kenneth Tyler. Following their first collaboration on a set of six color lithographs entitled The Hollywood Collection in 1965, Hockney continued to work with Tyler for almost four decades. Pool Made with Paper Blue Ink for Book, from Paper Pools was in fact inspired by Tyler’s backyard swimming pool – as Hockney recalls:

  

“Ken had a swimming pool in the garden… I kept looking at the swimming pool… it was a wonderful subject – water, the light on the water… every time you see it, it takes on a different character. You look at the surface, you look below it, you look through it, everyday it looks different.”

—David Hockney

Hockney’s swimming pools, including Pool Made with Paper and Blue Ink for Book, are celebrated as one of the most instantly recognizable images in contemporary art. They are an embodiment of positivity, serenity, and joy, expressive of the freedom that characterized Los Angeles in the sixties and seventies. Furthermore, emblematic of the artist’s endeavors in depicting the fluid appearance of water, Hockney’s lithographic pool prints are a remarkable example of the artist’s diversity in approaches to printmaking, confirming his ranks as one of the most significant and innovative artists of his generation