Revolutionary British Artist David Hockney Dies Aged 88

The Life and Legacy of David Hockney

David Hockney, the iconic British painter who cast a revolutionary gaze across 20th-century art, has died aged 88. He made his name as a pop artist during the swinging 60s and was perhaps best known for his paintings of swimming pools that helped define the Los Angeles aesthetic.

Early Life and Career

Born in Bradford in 1937, Hockney was the fourth of five children in what he described as a “radical working-class family”. His parents encouraged their son’s early artistic promise. He studied art at Bradford College and sold his first painting – a portrait of his father – for £10 at the Yorkshire Artists Exhibition in 1957.

Artistic Contributions

Hockney’s six-decade career cannot be defined by a single era. He produced perspective-shifting portraits using photo-collage, experimented with abstract landscape painting and, in later life, investigated the possibilities of creating artworks out of emerging 3D technology. Works such as A Bigger Splash and Portrait of an Artist (Pool With Two Figures) depicted hedonistic scenes of love, lust and loss taking place below the city’s sun-soaked skies.

The Impact of His Art

After moving to LA in the mid-60s, his more mature and restrained works garnered acclaim for their ability to transport deep and complex emotions on to the canvas. Man in Shower in Beverly Hills (1964) found the artist hitting his stride as he developed towards a more realist style. In November 2018, Hockney’s 1972 masterpiece, Portrait of an Artist (Pool With Two Figures), sold for $90.3m (£70.2m) at Christie’s, a world record for a living artist at the time.

The Future of His Legacy

Hockney is believed to have turned down a knighthood on several occasions and once declined an invitation to paint a portrait of the Queen. His iconoclasm found its way into the 2001 book Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters, in which he challenged much established thinking regarding how the great paintings of the past may have been created.