ARTIST David Hockney’s smash hit exhibition of works featuring East Yorkshire landscapes is to move to Spain.

A Bigger Picture, which has been drawing huge crowds and equally huge acclaim at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, will transfer to the iconic Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao in mid-May, and will continue until September 30.

The exhibition was inspired in part by Hockney’s largest work, Bigger Trees Near Warter, his 2007 depiction of a landscape near the East Yorkshire village, which attracted more than 130,000 visitors to York Art Gallery last year.

Tourism in the Yorkshire Wolds has already been benefiting from the London exhibition, with a number of hotels and guest houses reporting fresh interest from people keen to visit the landscapes behind the works.

A spokesman for the Guggenheim said this would be the first major exhibition held in Spain to celebrate the crucial role landscape played in the career of Hockney, who was considered the most important living British painter.

“Boldness, energy, originality, and commitment are some of the qualities of this artist, who moves between respect and reverence for the great masters of the past and curiosity about and exploration of new technologies.”

He said bright landscapes inspired by his native county formed the core of the exhibition, which featured oil paintings, charcoals, iPad drawings, sketchbooks and digital videos.

“This exhibition offers a unique vision into Hockney’s creative world and demonstrates his enormous capacity to represent nature using different techniques, as well as revealing his attachment to the landscape of his youth.”

Referring to two of the works, the Woldgate Woods and Thixendale Trees, created between 2006 and 2008, he said Hockney focused attention on the landscapes’ changing conditions. Dominating one of the museum’s massive galleries, will be the monumental The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire in 2011.