David Hockney

David Hockney, (born in 1937 in Yorkshire, England), was an English painter, draftsman, printmaker, photographer, and stage designer whose works were characterized by his expertise in technique, a preoccupation with light, and an objective realism aspect, built from Pop art and photography. As a very important contributor to the Pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most influential British artists of the 20th century.

He studied at the Bradford College of Art (1953–57) and the Royal College of Art, London (1959–62), where he received a gold medal in the graduate competition. He traveled to the United States in 1961 to teach at the universities of Iowa, Colorado, and California and after, he continued to commute between England and the U.S. until settling in LA in 1978. The intense city light of Los Angeles, along with the “California modern” aesthetic, has had a very prominent influence on Hockney’s work since. 

Much of Hockney’s subject matter included portraits and self-portraits and quiet incidental scenes of his friends and the spaces he was traveling among; for instance, the very famously known Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) (1972). The casual elegance and tranquil luminosity of these pieces also predominated in his still life works. Hockney’s exploration of photography in the 1980s resulted in Pearblossom Hwy., (April 1986), and other ambitious photocollages. He published several series of graphic works in book form, including illustrations for Six Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm (1970) and The Blue Guitar (1977). 

After experimenting with abstract landscapes during the 1990s, Hockney considered the representation of space in a series of multi-paneled works during the early 21st century. He also pursued his long-standing interest in new technologies. Among the many large-scale pieces featured in the traveling exhibition “David Hockney: A Bigger Picture” from 2012 to 2014, were several compelling drawings done on an iPad. A traveling retrospective that opened at Tate Britain in 2017 attested to Hockney’s enduring popularity when it became the most-visited exhibition at that venue. The following year Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), one of Hockney’s most well-known paintings, sold at the Christie’s auction for a record breaking $90 million dollars, exceeding pay that any living artist has received. This marked Hockney’s place in history. Meanwhile, Hockney continued to draw landscapes with an iPad, including a multi-panel frieze (2020) of Normandy, where he spent the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The work was shown the following year in the exhibition “A Year in Normandy” at the Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris.

Hockney’s books included Hockney by Hockney (1976), Travels with Pen, Pencil, and Ink (1978), Paper Pools (1980), David Hockney Photographs (1982), China Diary (with Stephen Spender; 1982), and Hockney Paints the Stage (1983). In 1989 he received the Japan Art Association’s Praemium Imperiale prize for painting. Queen Elizabeth II appointed Hockney to the Order of Merit—a group of no more than 24 individuals at a time who have distinguished themselves in science, art, literature, or public service—in 2012.