A Moving Still Life is among the most engaging compositions from David Hockney’s celebrated Blue Guitar portfolio — a suite of twenty etchings created between 1976 and 1977 that explore the boundaries between art, imagination, and transformation.

In this playfully surreal scene, a mannequin-like head and animated still-life elements seem to shift and sway, as if caught between motion and stasis. The tablecloth morphs into four spindly legs, the pedestals in the foreground appear to totter, and the surrounding space dissolves into ambiguity. Every line and colour pulse with rhythm, echoing the portfolio’s central theme — the metamorphosis of perception through art.

The work’s title, A Moving Still Life, becomes both visual pun and philosophical statement. Hockney invites the viewer to question what is static and what is alive in the act of seeing — a quintessential expression of his curiosity, wit, and technical mastery.

The Blue Guitar portfolio was directly inspired by Wallace Stevens’s 1936 poem The Man with the Blue Guitar, itself a meditation on Pablo Picasso’s The Old Guitarist (1903). The portfolio’s frontispiece reads:

Hockney discovered the poem while on holiday in Fire Island in 1976 with curator Henry Geldzahler and writer Christopher Isherwood. In his own words, the etchings were “not literal illustrations but visual interpretations of its themes — transformations within art, and the relation between reality and imagination.”

A Moving Still Life features Hockney’s partner and muse Gregory Evans, reimagined within a dynamic, shifting world where perspectives collide and dissolve — a direct homage to Picasso’s Cubist explorations of form and perception.

The Blue Guitar portfolio stands as one of Hockney’s most important graphic achievements, uniting literary, musical, and artistic traditions into a cohesive modern masterwork. Produced in collaboration with Petersburg Press, these etchings represent the height of Hockney’s technical experimentation and conceptual sophistication.

A Moving Still Life encapsulates the portfolio’s playful yet profound spirit — bridging poetry, philosophy, and painterly invention. Works from The Blue Guitar are held in major international collections, including the Museum of Contemporary Art (Tokyo) and the Tate, London.

With its impeccable provenance, edition size of only 200, and direct association with Hockney’s mature exploration of imagination and representation, this print offers both art-historical importance and strong investment appeal, resonating with collectors seeking works that define the intellectual breadth of British Pop Art.