David Hockney|220 for 2020 (TASCHEN)

The book records the year the pandemic held Hockney in Normandy, when he drew the landscape on his iPad day after day. In March 2020, as social distancing began, he started sending iPad drawings of the countryside to friends. They followed the renewal of the apple, pear, cherry and plum trees, and one early daffodil carried the title 'Do Remember They Can't Cancel The Spring'. In his short introduction to the book, Hockney called the project a lifeline during lockdown. The paintings are printed in up to seven special colours and tipped onto blue paper. An aerial iPad painting of the house and garden decorates the box lid.

Drawings from the sketchbooks

'Spilt Ink with Tests (David Hockney. 220 for 2020. Art Edition)' dates from Hockney's arrival in Normandy in 2019 and shows two overturned inkwells beside ten stripes of different coloured inks. 'My Second Drawing of Beuvron en Auge (David Hockney. 220 for 2020. Art Edition)' shows the square at the centre of the timber-framed village. 'Self-Portrait in My Living Room (David Hockney. 220 for 2020. Art Edition)' has him smoking and looking out at the viewer, and 'Two Chairs and Rain on Window (David Hockney. 220 for 2020. Art Edition)' looks across a table through a rain-spotted window to the garden. Each print is signed, dated and numbered in pencil, and Hockney co-published the four with TASCHEN.

Before and after

'A Bigger Book (TASCHEN)' in 2016 and 'My Window (TASCHEN)' in 2019 also each issued four of his screen drawings as prints, in editions of 250. This book kept the four art editions but cut each to an edition size of 100, and it turned the pattern round: the iPad work fills the book, while the prints go back to the sketchbook. The Normandy paintings belong to his wider 'iPad Drawings', and the Royal Academy showed 116 of them in 2021.

Auction results

A complete set of all four art editions, each print numbered 57/100, made £54,180 at Phillips London in September 2026. Among single art editions, Art Edition B sold for £24,130 at Phillips London in September 2023, Art Edition A made £17,780 there in January 2024 and Art Edition D £12,065 in September 2024. All four figures include fees.