IGOR STRAVINSKY METROPOLITAN OPERA.

Large format silkscreen poster for the New York Metropolitan Opera's 1981 Igor Stravinsky Triple Bill which included 'Le Sacre du Printemps', 'Le Ressignol' and 'Oedipus Rex', for which David Hockney provided the stage design. Silkscreen in colours on wove paper. Measuring 191.5 x 74 cm. Signed and inscribed by David Hockney. In fine condition, the print bright, the paper with occasional, faint irregularity in texture at the very edges. Framed under acrylic. The frame measures 204 x 87.5 cm. A monumental signed print that speaks of Hockney's incredible versatility and also opens a window into both his social world and the life of an unsung champion of British art, Vera Russell.

Inscribed by David Hockney in large, pencilled letters along the bottom edge "For Vera love from David". Across his career Hockney has provided the stage design for eleven operas, a format to which he brings his characteristic use of bold colours and shapes and deceptively simple, playful composition. The Metropolitan Opera asked Hockney to be the stage designer for their Igor Stravinsky Triple Bill production, staged in December 1981, following the success of their previous collaboration, a French Triple Bill, comprising Erik Satie's 'Parade', Francis Poulenc's 'Les Mamelles de Tirésias' and Maurice Ravel's 'L'enfant et les Sortilèges', staged in February of the same year. The recipient, Vera Russell (née Poliakoff, 1911-1992), was a close friend of the artist and a significant figure in the contemporary British art scene. She was born in St. Petersberg and moved to Britain with her family in early childhood. She worked as an actress (under the stage name Vera Lindsay) on London stages throughout the 1930s and appeared in a small number of films, including 'Spellbound' (1941), and in the 1940s she embarked upon a brief career as a war reporter. By the 1960s Russell was married to the art critic John Russell and was firmly embedded within the art world, earning a reputation as an influential tastemaker and patron of the arts. She was known for her impeccable eye and her tough, exacting character – the art critic William Packer described her as "redoubtable", and the novelist Francis King stated that "she was both a remarkable and a difficult woman. Had she not been difficult, she would not have been so remarkable". Russell ran a series of galleries in co-operation with her artist friends and colleagues in Covent Garden, London, from the early 1970s. She was notable as one of the few gallery directors and curators to champion unknown and experimental artists, as well as established artists such as Hockney and Robert Medley, at a time when arts funding was notoriously unstable. Russell also worked with the printers of the present poster, independent arts publisher The Petersburg Press, long-time printers of Hockney's artworks who also acted as his worldwide agent. Russell notably initiated and directed the production of 'Fizzles/Foirades' by Jasper Johns and Samuel Beckett and The W. H. Auden and Henry Moore publication 'Auden / Moore: Poems and Lithographs'. Russell was incredibly well connected; her address book includes details of famous ballet dancers, novelists, composers, socialites and royals, though her relationships with visual artists remain the most significant. Russell maintained lengthy, close correspondences with many groundbreaking artists including Hockney, Francis Bacon and Henry Moore. Hockney made several artworks of and dedicated to her, and his letters to her written with a marked fondness and openness, addressed always to 'Dearest Vera'. Russell's obituary in The Times astutely states that she was "the great unknown factor without whose subterraneous workings the face of British culture would surely have been radically different". (Baggot 95; a smaller, offset version of this poster was also produced measuring 96.5 x 43.2cm, the edition number of either the silkscreen or the offset lithograph version are unrecorded)