Hockney is taken into account an influential and defining determine in twentieth and twenty first century modern portray.
Printed On 12 Jun 2026
British artist David Hockney, thought-about some of the influential and defining figures in modern artwork, whose work captured the world in sensible color, has died aged 88.
Describing Hockney as “some of the necessary figures in modern artwork in each the twentieth and twenty first centuries”, his publicist Erica Bolton mentioned in a press release on Friday that he had “handed away peacefully at dwelling” in London a day earlier. She didn’t give a explanation for demise.
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“His seven-decade profession and prolific oeuvre was characterised by his multimedia method in picture making, an mental inquiry into the character of depiction and perspective, and a sustained dedication to celebrating and portraying the world round him,” her assertion added.
One of many main artists concerned within the Pop artwork motion within the Nineteen Sixties, Hockney established himself as a globally famend painter and grasp draughtsman and stored portray, experimenting and exhibiting proper up till his demise.
Born in 1937 in west Yorkshire, northern England, Hockney skilled on the Bradford Faculty of Artwork within the area after which at London’s Royal School, from which he graduated with a Gold Medal distinction.
A conscientious objector who did his army service as a hospital orderly, Hockney went towards the conventions of post-war Britain, realising at an early age that he was homosexual and that he wished to be an artist.
He would quickly emerge as one of many seminal abilities within the new era of British artists, capturing all the pieces from carefree Nineteen Sixties California – the place he moved in 1964 – to the bucolic landscapes of his native Yorkshire.
Along with his trademark spherical glasses and bleached-blond hair, he was a well known determine within the swinging British and US artwork scenes of the Nineteen Sixties, even earlier than he reached the age of 30.
His work have been simply as distinctive, lots of them making a dreamlike world of patterned mild bouncing off water and home windows, and human kinds rendered in flattened, simplified shapes in matte acrylic paint.
In 2018, his iconic swimming pool image, Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) offered for $90.3m in New York, setting a brand new public sale document for a dwelling artist. He was unseated by Jeff Koons’ Rabbit a yr later.
Identified for experimenting in a spread of media and methods – together with printmaking, images and stage design, alongside portray and drawing – he embraced trendy expertise because it emerged.
He had used iPads since they first got here out in 2010 and labored with builders to create custom-made apps, in accordance with a Nationwide Portrait Gallery profile. He additionally stored showcasing new work.
Hockney is survived by his longtime companion Jean-Pierre Goncalves de Lima, his great-nephew and studio assistant Richard Hockney, his brothers Philip and John, and quite a few nieces, nephews, great-nieces and great-nephews.
