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Nichols Canyon

Oil on canvas by David Hockney, 1980. A large-scale painting depicting the winding road through Nichols Canyon in Los Angeles, seen as if experienced from a moving car. Characteristic of Hockney's late-1970s and early-1980s exploration of time, movement, and landscape in Los Angeles, combining Cubist multiple-perspective principles with vivid colour. Current custody: private collection.

Scholarly Significance

Represent Hockney's LA road paintings period with Nichols Canyon (1980) — a large oil showing a winding Los Angeles canyon road characteristic of his late-1970s/early-1980s synthesis of landscape and movement.

Notes

  • ·Nichols Canyon is a winding canyon road in the Hollywood Hills, connecting the San Fernando Valley to Hollywood. Hockney lived near this road during his Los Angeles years.
  • ·The painting reflects Hockney's growing interest in depicting movement and time through a painting — how a road unfolds as it is driven, rather than seen from a fixed perspective. This interest would later inform his Cubist-influenced Joiners (photographic collages) of the 1980s.
  • ·The work belongs to a group of LA landscape-road paintings that bridge the swimming pool period and his later multi-canvas Yorkshire works.
  • ·Node status is 'stub' — dimensions and full provenance pending catalogue raisonné verification.