David Hockney, the British painter whose vivid depictions of California swimming pools and intimate portraits reshaped modern art, died on Thursday at his home in London. He was 88, just weeks shy of his 89th birthday. His publicist, Erica Bolton, confirmed the news.
A Life in Colour
Hockney was born in Bradford, England, in 1937 and studied at the Royal College of Art in London before moving to Los Angeles in the 1960s. There, he became synonymous with the city's light and leisure, creating iconic works such as A Bigger Splash and Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures). His time in California defined his early career, but he later spent long periods in northern France, where he painted landscapes of the countryside around his home in Normandy.
Throughout his career, Hockney experimented relentlessly. He worked in oil, acrylic, watercolour, pencil, crayon, and photographic collage. His photomontages, often called 'joiners', pieced together multiple perspectives of a single scene, challenging traditional notions of perspective. He also embraced digital technology, creating art on iPhones and iPads in his later years.
Hockney's subjects were deeply personal: friends, family, and lovers. His series of portraits of his mother, his partner Peter Schlesinger, and his close friend Celia Birtwell are among his most celebrated. He also painted the Yorkshire Wolds, the landscape of his childhood, in a series of large-scale works that captured the changing seasons with exuberant colour.
His influence extended beyond the canvas. Hockney was a vocal advocate for arts education and a critic of the art market's commercialisation. He also wrote extensively on art history, arguing in his book Secret Knowledge that Old Masters like Vermeer used optical devices—a claim that sparked heated debate among scholars.
In 2012, Hockney was awarded the Order of Merit by Queen Elizabeth II, one of the highest honours in the United Kingdom. He also received the Praemium Imperiale from the Japan Art Association and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His works are held in major museums worldwide, including the Tate in London, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Hockney's death marks the end of an era in British art. He was a figure who bridged the gap between the figurative and the avant-garde, always insisting on the primacy of seeing. As he once said, 'The moment you begin to draw, you see things differently.'
His legacy will be celebrated in a retrospective at the Royal Academy of Arts in London later this year. For now, the art world mourns a master who never stopped looking.
