David Hockney's Iconic "The Splash" Expected to Bank $39 Million at Auction

in DesignWords By Heather Snowden

David Hockney's iconic painting "The Splash" is heading to Sotheby's auction house next month and it's expected to bank big. The work, which was created in 1966, is expected to fetch between £20 million and £30 million (approximately $26.1 million–$39.2 million), Art News reports.

"The Splash" set a record for Hockney when it was auctioned for £2.9 million back in 2006. Since then, his artworks have reached much higher sums, with “Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)” selling at Christie's in New York for just over $90 million in 2018. That sale made Hockney the highest-selling living artist in the world, before being dethroned by Jeff Koons last year.

The artwork was created as a companion to "A Little Splash" (1966) and the famous "A Bigger Splash" (1967), which hangs in London's Tate Modern.

The auction will take place on February 11.

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David Hockney’s landmark pool painting is set to make a ‘splash’ in London 💦 Painted in 1966, ‘The Splash’ is expected to sell for more than £20 million when it appears in our Contemporary Art Evening Auction on February 11. The painting captures a fleeting moment just seconds after a diver has broken the calm surface of a swimming pool. It is one of a series of three ‘splashes’, the largest of which is a jewel in the @Tate collection. The painting follows the artist’s relocation to LA just months earlier. The city was everything the Yorkshire-born artist had hoped it would be: a land of possibility, sun drenched houses, deep blue pools, palm trees and beautiful bodies, and ‘The Splash’ embodies the warmth, affluence, and pursuit of pleasure which Hockney so loved about this Californian dreamland. - #SothebysContemporary #CaliforniaDreaming #DavidHockney #losangeles

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