David Hockney at the press preview of his retrospective

Through his entire life, commemorated in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s retrospective, David Hockney has always let the colors fly, from his earliest years as a UK phenom to his most recent digital iPad sketches. Take a look in our Flickr album.

Hockney’s works are hung in chronological order in this big, colorful show, closing February 25 – the only US stop for this joyous celebration of one artist’s life.

The earliest paintings represent the time Hockney burst upon the UK art scene, going from grad student to gallery star in a hot second. Large canvases that explore the still-banned gay lifestyle are followed by colorful, joyful road-trip paintings that mix words, puns, flattened geography, and many exotic personnages of the American West.

Detail of A Bigger Splash, an LA acrylic from 1967

These works represent the launching pad for Hockney’s most iconic period – large canvases of lawns, pools, and sprinklers of growing and glamorous Los Angeles. Big flat Sixties spaces with blue or white water punctuated with remnants of abstract brushwork.

A gorgeous acrylic of Mount Fuji is drenched in Frankenthaler washes. It’s kind of a joke, since Hockney traveled to Japan to enjoy the scenery, but was so disappointed by all the industrial landscape that he settled on commemorating the trip by just doing a painting from a postcard and flower-arrangement guide book. Interestingly, Hockney’s Fuji-and-flower image holds the honor of being the Met gift shop’s best-selling postcard, outselling even Matisse’s haystacks or lily pads.

1990 oil Pacific Coast Highway and Santa Monica

Hockney’s biographical journey continues through galleries that are polar opposites – monumental, famous double portraits of celebrities and benefactors followed by a more intimate space peopled with little drawings of Warhol, other friends, and himself.

The color, size, and character of the rest of the work really crank the show up a notch. It’s like looking at Los Angeles landscapes, the Grand Canyon, or a friend’s colorful living room from the perspective of a drone hovering over it all. Every painting here makes a big, bold statement.

Hockney’s 2010-2013 iPad drawings

When the scale of the landscapes simply gets too big to manage (think Thomas Moran’s masterworks), Hockney just paints it all on a grid of smaller canvases that he can just hang in a grid. Brilliant solution .

The final room showcases Hockney’s most recent work – colorful iPad drawings. At age 80, he wakes up every morning, looks out the window, picks up the tablet, and translates his thoughts into bright, bold beautiful color.

Take a look with curator Ian Altaveer as he walks you through the show: