David Hockney is one of few artists to have tackled the Grand Canyon. In 1982, in an effort, as he put it, to ‘photograph the unphotographable’ he produced a monumental photo-collage of the landmark comprising 60 images assembled in a grid. In the late Nineties, he returned to Arizona to capture the Grand Canyon in paint. ‘I wanted to paint it how I remembered it, with real colour and pigment, strong pure colour put right.’

The two resulting works, A Bigger Grand Canyon and A Closer Grand Canyon (both 1998), each feature 60 canvases executed in bright, Fauve-inspired hues. Since then, Hockney has returned to the Grand Canyon motif on numerous occasions. Grand Canyon I (2017), seen here, is one such brilliant example. Painted in reverse perspective on a hexagonal canvas, it exemplifies Hockney’s enduring interest in capturing three-dimensional space on the surface of a flat picture. The alluring canvas is currently on display for the first time in the UK as part of a new Hockney exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.

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