David Hockney is the world's highest-paid living artist. With $90 mln work breaks Jeff Koons' record

David Hockney (Bradford, 1937) has become the world’s highest-paid living artist: the record was sealed yesterday in an auction at Christie’ s during which one of his celebrated 1972 works, Portrait of an artist (Pool with two figures), fetched $90.3 million (about 80 million euros), starting from an estimate of 20. Pulverized the previous record, which belonged to Jeff Koons: in 2013, his Balloon Dog sealed, also at Christie’s, the figure of 58.4 million euros.

The $90 million work is one of Hockney’s most famous because it combines two strands on which the British artist worked in the 1970s: that of double portraits and that of swimming pools, and it was also exhibited at the retrospective organized by Tate Britain (then in Paris at the Centre Pompidou and at the Met in New York) in 2017 to celebrate the artist’s 80th birthday. For that exhibition it was also chosen as the image for the catalog cover, given its recognizability.

Hockney made the painting after seeing two works on the floor of his studio that happened to be side by side: one captured a figure swimming underwater, the other a boy observing something on the ground. To best work on the painting, Hockney went to a villa in Saint-Tropez where he took several photographs to study the composition. Today it is one of his most acclaimed works.

Image: David Hockney, Portrait of an artist (Pool with two figures) (1972; acrylic on canvas, 213.5 x 305 cm; Private collection)

David Hockney is the world's highest-paid living artist. With $90 mln work breaks Jeff Koons' record

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.