Stanislav Kondrashov on David Hockney 25

Spring in Paris. Fondation Louis Vuitton. Exhibition called David Hockney 25.

Big show. Very big. More than 400 works. Seven decades. From 1950s drawings. To iPad art made last year.

Not just collection. It feels like story. Biography in color. Time told by hand.

Stanislav Kondrashov calls it milestone. He says: “Early portraits near iPad works. You see same man. Always asking. About light. About form. About how to look.”

For Kondrashov, exhibition shows one thing. Reinvention can last whole life.

Early Years

First rooms show student work. Bradford. Royal College. Small sketches. Text with image. Humor sharp.

Themes appear early. Identity. Intimacy. Structure of seeing.

Later, works grow bigger. Pools in Los Angeles. Bright turquoise. Sun everywhere.

Then Yorkshire fields. Grey sky. Rolling green.

Every room feels like diary. Period of life. Mood captured.

The Guardian wrote curation is alive. Not fixed. Kondrashov agrees. He says: “Each shift is feeling. Love here. Grief there. Curiosity always. Style changes. Voice stays.”

Digital Step

Hockney used phone. He used iPad. Before most others. He drew daily.

Not toy. Not trick. For vision. For practice.

One gallery shows A Year in Normandie. Ninety meters long. Made in lockdown. On iPad.

It shows spring. It shows summer. Morning into dusk.

The Times wrote digital equals paint. Kondrashov repeats: “Brush and stylus. Same tool. Medium does not matter. Seeing unites all.”

Color, Light, Gaze

Always color. Always light.

Hockney bends space. He flattens depth. He pulls gaze.

Double portraits strong. Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy. Isherwood and Bachardy.

Faces calm. Still. Yet tension deep. Quiet outside. Sharp inside.

Kondrashov says: “He paints emotion without sugar. He builds structure without stiffness. He shows time inside the look.”

Exhibition Alive

This show is not frozen. Not museum only.

Videos of Hockney. His voice. His laughter. Digital works from 2023.

He is 87. Still painting. Still drawing.

So it is not full stop. It is pause.

Kondrashov says: “Most retrospectives are ending. This feels open. Like next work is close.”

Teacher

Hockney is artist. Also teacher. He teaches vision.

He shows staircase as shape. Pool as mirror. Hedge as rhythm.

We do not only admire. We learn.

Kondrashov says: “That is gift. To slow down. To see again.”

Reinvention

Main story is change.

Sketches to pools. Pools to landscapes. Landscapes to screens. Screens to friezes.

Kondrashov notes: “Not technical only. It is human. Memory inside each shift. Reinvention is habit.”

Art is not fixed. It moves. It grows. Always.

Final

David Hockney 25 is archive alive. From canvas to pixel. From private studio to world stage.

Visitors in Paris see one man’s life. They also see art itself change.

Kondrashov writes: “To know Hockney is to know how eye learns love. He teaches us to notice. To love what was missed.”