André Heller and David Hockney sitting at a red picnic table conversing over drinks on a blue pavilion surrounded by greenery for 1987 Luna Luna park.

David Hockney

David Hockney’s contribution to the 1987 Luna Luna park was the colorful Geometric Forest Pavilion with Music

For Luna Luna, David Hockney designed a cylindrical forest pavilion made of panels painted with multicolored, geometric trees.

Artist

David Hockney

Attraction

Geometric forest pavilion with music

Born

1937, England

Hockney is associated with Pop Art, a movement grounded in the language of commercial imagery

He is primarily a painter but has worked in photography

The landscape and architecture of the cities that Hockney has lived in—including Los Angeles, California; Yorkshire, England; and Normandy, France—have inspired many of his best-known works

André Heller, David Hockney.
David Hockney with model for geometric forest pavilion with music, exhibited 1987.

David Hockney creates drawings, paintings, photographs, prints, and stage designs depicting landscapes, still lifes, domestic interiors, and figurative works. His work resists easy categorization, and although usually associated with Pop Art, his style and color palette have shifted dramatically over the decades. Hockney is deeply influenced by his environment. Attending art school in Bradford, Yorkshire, and the Royal College of Art in London from the 1950s to the early 1960s led to a moody color palette reflecting Britain's muted, damp, and dismal climate. Upon moving to Los Angeles in 1964, he embraced bright, pastel colors—turquoise, yellow, pink—conjuring the light of the city.

His work resists easy categorization, and although usually associated with Pop Art, his style and color palette have shifted dramatically over the decades.

David Hockney and his assistant.

In Los Angeles, Hockney created iconic works such as A Bigger Splash (1967) and Beverly Hills Housewife (1966-67), which capture the late-sixties Southern California atmosphere, defining the way the city has been depicted in art. At this time, Hockney began taking Polaroids and soon began to use photography as both a compositional source and physical material with which to create collages of photographic prints. In the early 2000s, Hockney returned to his origins and began making landscape paintings outdoors, or en plein-air, in his native Yorkshire, England.

Fairground view: David Hockney, Geometric forest pavilion with music. Luna Luna, Hamburg, Germany, June-July, 1987.
Fairground view: David Hockney, Geometric forest pavilion with music. Luna Luna, Hamburg, Germany, June-July, 1987.

For Luna Luna, Hockney designed a cylindrical chamber made of panels painted with blue, red, and green trees, reducing the complexity of the organic form to evocative geometric shapes. Visitors entered this structure through a rounded arch to encounter a second cylinder formed from similarly painted tree panels. A lattice of arches cut to mimic the curves of branches allowed visitors to enter the installation’s center, while classical music by Johann and Joseph Strauss enhanced this magical experience. Stylistically, the attraction uses the brightly colored forms of Hockney’s stage sets, visually akin to the trees featured in his design for the Stravinsky Triple Bill at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1981.

Interior: David Hockney, Geometric forest pavilion with music. Luna Luna, Hamburg, Germany, June-July, 1987.
Interior: David Hockney, Geometric forest pavilion with music. Luna Luna, Hamburg, Germany, June-July, 1987.

Discover more about your favorite artists and attractions

In the original Luna Luna book, translated and reissued for the first time since 1987.