Meet The Curator: David Hockney’s A Year In Normandie

Nestled in the middle of Hyde Park, surrounded by blossom and spring trees, the Serpentine has never felt more at one with the season. Inside, a monumental work by beloved British artist David Hockney is on display in its UK premiere: A Year in Normandie.

Inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry (which comes to the British Museum this autumn for the first time in 1,000 years), it wraps around the full interior of the Serpentine North, made up of more than 100 iPad paintings. And as with all Hockney works, it’s all in the details: pointillism blossom, scribbled lichen on tree trunks, tiny leaves scattered across the green-flooded floor, dandelions denoted with a simple circular splodge, splashing brooks stretching into rivers, red barns conjured with wobbly lines, and clouds, trees and haybales all cast in phenomenal digital detail.

You could whip around the entire thing in a matter of minutes, and then again for a slower peruse, and then again quickly, experiencing all the seasons in a condensed yet sprawling blur: grey rain showers, trees spliced perfectly in half by the changing seasons, branches gaining blossom and leaves before losing them again, all culminating in winter, white cast on black spindly branches.

It’s an enveloping experience, created by Hockney when he retreated to Normandie in the height of the pandemic in 2020. Below, we delve beneath the surface with the help of Serpentine’s artistic director Hans Ulrich Obrist.

Curator Hans Ulrich Obrist’s Guide To David Hockney: A Year In Normandie

A Year in Normandie by David Hockney is a 90m-long interpretation of Normandy’s changing seasons, inspired by the historic Bayeux Tapestry.

Overview

We’re very excited about Hockney’s exhibition, running from March to August 2026. There is a series of new paintings alongside Hockney’s monumental A Year In Normandy, which he created during lockdown. This work will have its UK premiere and will go all along the space of the Serpentine North gallery, whilst the 10 new paintings will be installed in the powder room. These new paintings have been especially created for the exhibition.

We’re very excited that after the very successful show of Hockney in Paris at the Foundation Louis Vuitton, which had more than 900,000 visitors, we can have this exhibition of his in London. It’s a dream come true and a deep pleasure, really. What is so exciting is that, at 88, Hockney continues to explore the language of painting with his incredible ingenuity. He brings figurative and abstract modes together in his still lives, portraits and, of course, the panoramic frieze, which comprises more than 100 iPad paintings.

The new portraits he created especially for the show capture not only the sitters, but also the act of seeing. The whole exhibition is very much about time. We will see in Hyde Park the changing seasons, because the show goes from spring into summer. Outside, we also have a large scale printed mural, especially created for the show, next to our garden on the backside of the gallery.

David Hockney: A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts about Painting, installation view, Serpentine North, 2026. (© David Hockney/George Darrell)

The Background

The background of the show is that I’ve been having had long conversations with David Hockney very regularly every year since I moved to London to work at the Serpentine in 2006. It’s always been a dream to do an exhibition with him. We’ve done a book of interviews, which gathers all my conversations with him over the last 20 years.

It was always a dream that these conversations would lead to an exhibition, but it was never the right moment. David always said, when it’s the right moment, it will be the right moment. We are so happy that over the course of the last 18 months, he felt that the moment had come. He really wanted to show this very big Euro Normandy work for the first time in the UK, but also show these new works which he has been creating after the Paris exhibition.

What Is On Display?

Visitors will be able to walk alongside the Year in Normandie. It’s a work like the Bayeux Tapestry, which is the inspiration for it; Hockney has known the Bayeux Tapestry since his childhood. You can never seen the full Year in Normandie work at once: you have to experience it while moving, strolling, walking through through the gallery.

The big surprise will certainly be these 10 new paintings nobody has ever seen. It was Hockney’s wish was to present them with mirrors. They are really a portrait of his family and carers, the people he works with. It’s very surprising that he makes abstract paintings which, at the same time, are on a tablecloth. He has never done that. He has never done that before.

Serpentine Pavilion 2026: a serpentine, designed by Isabel Abascal and Alessandro Arienzo, LANZA atelier. Design render, aerial view. (© LANZA Atelier/ Serpentine)

While You’re There…

You can also visit our pavilion this summer. Every year we build a pavilion with an architect, and this year it’s the young Mexican architect, Lanza atelier titled a serpentine, which will open in June.

Then from late March onwards, at Serpentine South, there will be the exhibition of Cecily Brown, a New York based painter from London, who has never had this big of a museum show in London. It’s a homecoming, and like Hockney’s exhibition, will also connect to the park. The idea was really so visitors can come on a walk to the park, stroll through the pavilion, experience David Hockney in the North Gallery and then cross the bridge to the South Gallery to see Cecily Brown and the pavilion – or vice versa.

You can visit us, have a coffee, and also eat in our restaurant, hang out there. It’s a Zaha Hadid-designed space – the only permanent structure the legendary architect did in central London.

Giuseppe Penone, Albero folgorato (Thunderstruck Tree), 2012. Bronze and gold. (© George Darrell/Giuseppe Penone/Serpentine)

Otherwise, you can of course experience Hyde Park, and in the park see our Giuseppe Penone’s sculpture in front of the gallery. It has been there since last year, titled Albero folgorato. It’s a tree which was struck by a lightning, and Penone has made a wonderful cast of this tree.

We always do public sculptures at the Serpentine. It’s very important that we have a direct interface with people because we have approximately 1 million visitors every year, but the park has 12 or 13 million visitors a year. For us, it’s very important that everybody who comes to the park experiences art. We believe in the idea of art for all, so people who usually wouldn’t go to museums or to exhibitions can, through the Serpentine campus, experience art. That’s also why the pavilion has open doors, so everybody can come in, and why all our programmes have free admission.

VISIT

David Hockney: A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts about Painting is at the Serpentine from 12 March to 23 August. Entry is free. serpentinegalleries.org