David Hockney (9 July 1937 – 11 June 2026)
His work over a prolific six decades ranged from psychologically precise portraits to luminous depictions of California pool sides.
Best known for paintings that imbued the everyday with an otherworldly stillness, psychologically precise portraits, and crystalline pool scenes, Hockney also explored printmaking, photography — even stage design for ballet and opera — across his prolific career of more than half a century.
He was a restless experimenter, using computer graphics in his work as early as the 1980s and exploring digital painting on his iPad late in life. He was a pioneer of LGBTQ+ rights — one of the first popular artists to create work depicting gay relationships, and one of the few to publicly denounce censorship of queer imagery.Â
Born in 1937 in Bradford, England, Hockney was raised in a working-class family as one of five siblings. His father restored baby carriages and campaigned against nuclear arms, passing down to his son a pacifist streak and Labour Party loyalty, while his mother became a frequent subject of his paintings. In 1953, he won a scholarship to the local Bradford School of Art, studying there through 1957.
In 1954, at age 17, he made a self-portrait in collaged newsprint, scrutinizing himself with sober, ferocious intensity.Â
Between 1959 and ’62, Hockney attended the Royal College of Art in London, where he sharpened already formidable draftsmanship skills and tried out and discarded various styles, from Hogarth-inspired perspective to Picasso-esque figuration. He began the first of many visits to the United States in 1961, drawn by what he perceived as a less sexually repressive environment than the United Kingdom. He went on to split his time between the two countries and teach at colleges in the US between 1964 and ’67, including in Iowa, Colorado, and California.
In the 1970s, Hockney started incorporating photographs — which he had long used as reference images for his paintings — into collages. He continued his experiments with one-point perspective into the 1980s, creating intricate images out of many Polaroid pictures arranged in a grid. One work from 1982 depicts his mother in a rainy graveyard, his own feet visible in the foreground, a moving portrait of widowhood. In the 1990s, Hockney turned his attention toward abstract landscapes and returned to his hometown of Yorkshire in the 2000s, where he began to chronicle the English countryside.Â
Eventually, Hockney became a household name. He painted a portrait of British pop star Harry Styles in 2022 for a show at the National Portrait Gallery that opened in 2023 after delays due to COVID-19.
In 2024, the National Gallery of Art in London paired Hockney with 15th-century painter Piero della Francesca, an homage both to the institution’s 200th birthday and Hockney’s longtime love and use of the collection.Â
Hockney received numerous honors and accolades, turning down British knighthood in the 1990s and receiving the Order of Merit, the nation’s highest royal award in the arts, in 2012.Â
Words by Lisa Yin Zhang / Hyperallergic
David Hockney, Snails Space with Vari-Lites, Painting as Performance, 1995-1996, oil on two canvases, acrylic on canvas-covered masonite, wood dowels, overall: 84 x 260 x 135 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum.
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