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This etching from David Hockney’s celebrated Six Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm portfolio depicts the famous story ‘Rumpelstilzchen’. Hockney invented this composition, stating “I liked the idea of starting off with a rather ordinary picture … a silly little man who’s stamped his foot into the ground, then is pulling it out, then pulls himself apart, and finally finishes up with this. It’s really an abstracted picture, his lips floating about in the air, and an eye and an eyelash. Again, I suppose it’s not, in a way, an illustration idea; it was just visually interesting for me – being able to move from that to that in just two stages. And it worked. So the interest for me isn’t always in the story. It’s what the story suggests visually, and things like that, that keeps me going.” Hockney completed several practice sketches before drawing directly on the copper plate.
He tore himself in two (Six Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm) 1969
Etching and aquatint on W S Hodgkinson paper watermarked “DH” and “PP”
Plate 17.6 x 12.8 in / 44.7 x 32.4 cm
Paper 24.75 x 17.5 in / 62.87 x 44.45 cm
Unique publisher’s copy aside from the edition of 400 books and 100 portfolios
