HOTEL ACATLÁN: FIRST DAY, 1985: Print by David Hockney from the Moving Focus series

David Hockney’s Hotel Acatlán: First Day, 1985, from the Moving Focus series, captures a sunlit Mexican courtyard through the artist’s panoramic lens. Produced as a lithograph print, the composition centres on a shaded portico with bold blue columns and a repetitive red-wooded roofline, opening onto a garden filled with potted plants and trees. The flattened perspective and saturated colour palette are characteristic of David Hockney’s prints from the 1980s, where he moved beyond single-point perspective to create a more immersive and spatially complex image.

 

Created following an unplanned stop in Acatlán, the work reflects Hockney’s constant exploration of new landscapes through experimentation. Viewed from a seated vantage point, the scene reinforces a sense of immediacy while maintaining formal precision across the wide format. As part of the Moving Focus series, Hotel Acatlán: First Day sits within Hockney’s broader exploration of space, architecture, and perception.