Image: David Hockney, London, 1966. Photograph: Jane Bown Literary Estate / Guardian News & Media 2022. 

The works of David Hockney, who is considered one of the most significant and creative artists of our time, are exhibited in Turkey for the first time with the exhibition The Arrival of Spring, Normandy, 2020 hosted by the Sakıp Sabancı Museum. The exhibition, which comprises the iPad paintings that he produced at his house in Normandy during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic; hosts events that shed light on the art of Hockney, who has been drawing with iPhone and iPad since the 2000s and has always searched for new technologies and methods throughout his long career. Dr. Osman Erden, who works on the relationship between art and society, will deliver a conference talk titled ‘David Hockney and the Swinging Sixties’ as a part of the exhibition.

The conference talk will focus on David Hockney's early career in the context of Britain's so-called ‘Swinging Sixties’. The Sixties, when the pursuit of sexual revolution and anti-nuclear attitudes have transformed into a social movement, the counterculture has become popular and bands like The Beatles, Pink Floyd and The Rolling Stones rocked the masses, was mainly a time when the young people strived to transform the country in hope of a different future. At the beginning of this period, which also found its way in art; David Hockney, a graduate of the Royal College of Art, who moved to Los Angeles in 1964; was among those who shook the country. In 1971, Hockney's drawing for OZ magazine's trial in England signified the end of the hippie dream and has become one of the symbols of British counterculture.

The event will be held in Turkish. Registration required.