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  • A room full of straw (Six Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm) by David Hockney

A room full of straw (Six Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm) by David Hockney

Petersburg Press

Etching and Aquatint

1969

Edition Size: Unique publisher’s copy aside from the edition of 400 books and 100 portfolios

Image Size: 9.8 x 8.7 inches

Sheet Size: 17.75 x 16 inches

Unsigned

Condition: Excellent

Details — Click to read

This etching from David Hockney’s celebrated Six Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm portfolio pictures the story ‘Rumpelstilzchen’. A room full of straw references Magritte’s The Tomb of the Wrestlers (in which a rose, and in another painting an apple, fills a room). However the reference is formal rather than conceptual. Hockney notes that while Magritte’s images play with scale, his image does not: “you could have a room full of straw, whereas you couldn’t have a whole rose fill a room.” Straw provided an ideal subject for Hockney to loosen up his typically precise cross hatching, with frenetic horizontal lines shaping the hay. Subtle wood texture rendered in aquatint provides a soft base for the hay in dark grey. Elegant line work defines a double window to the right, the baseboards, and mouldings where the walls meet the ceiling.

A room full of straw (Six Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm) 1969
Etching and aquatint on W S Hodgkinson paper watermarked “DH” and “PP”
Plate 9.8 x 8.7 in / 25 x 22 cm
Paper 17.75 x 16 in / 45.09 x 40.64 cm
Unique publisher’s copy aside from the edition of 400 books and 100 portfolios

$1,200.00

The Artist

David Hockney

Born in Bradford England on the 9th July 1937 David Hockney was interested in art from a very early age, and was an admirer of Fragonard, Picasso and Matisse. The fifth of six children his parents encouraged his artistic experimentation. He went to the Bradford College of Art 1953-57. To fulfil his national service, he worked in hospitals as he was a conscientious objector to war. Then in 1959 he was accepted into the Royal College of Art, Graduate school in London.

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