An early David Hockney masterpiece that has not been seen for more than four decades is set to fetch around £16 million when it goes under the hammer at Christie's.
The 1965 work, California, has been kept in the same private collection since 1968 and was unveiled on Wednesday January 25 at the auction house’s London HQ.
It will go on show in Paris and New York before coming back to London to be sold on March 7.
Katharine Arnold, Head of Post-War and Contemporary Art Europe at Christies, said: “David Hockney’s pool paintings have become some ofthe most iconic and loved images of our time.
"California is an exceptional painting made shortly after Hockney’s first trip to Los Angeles in 1964 where he marvelled at the brilliant light and mosaic-like cityscape populated by bright blue swimming pools.
"After a childhood brought up in the north of England, and having studied in London, still reeling from the Second World War, California must have felt like arcadia; a beautiful place to be free and enjoy being young.
“This sense of the artist’s optimism and jubilation is in the very fabric of Hockney’s California. Owned by a private European collector since 1968 and last seen in public in 1979, this painting is sensational and follows in the footsteps of Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) which achieved a world record at Christie’s in 2018.”
Hockney’s Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) sold for £70.2 million – a record for a living artist.
