David Hockney, one of the most influential artists of recent decades, has died

A fundamental figure of the Pop Art movement in the 1960s passed away this Thursday at the age of 88.

The British artist David Hockneyone of the most influential figures in contemporary art, died on Thursday, at his home in London, aged 88, his press office announced this Friday.

Considered one of the most influential British artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, who worked practically until the end of his life, Hockney was a fundamental figure in the movement Pop Art in the 1960s. His paintings of swimming pools glistening in the Los Angeles sun became icons of 20th century art. But his work went far beyond that label.

Trained at Bradford College of Art and the Royal College of Art in London, Hockney became known to the public in the 1960s, at a time when British art was opening up to new visual languages, popular culture and greater freedom.

His work distinguished itself early on thanks to the use of luminous colors, attention to light, the apparent simplicity of the compositions and a very unique way of representing spaces, bodies and personal relationships.

In ’64, he went to the ‘city of angels’, clearly attracted by the light, modernist houses and relaxation that it emanated. It was there that he did works such as A Bigger Splash e Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)sold in 2018 for 90.3 million dollars:

Over the decades, Hockney has addressed topics such as homosexuality, intimacy and desire at a time when they were still taboo, in the form of painting, drawing, engraving, photography, set design, collage, video and digital art. In recent years, he embraced, for example, the iPad, which he used to create landscapes and color studies, including works inspired by Normandy, where he lived part of the final phase of his life.

Hockney was born in Bradford, northern England, on July 9, 1937, into a family of modest means, but lived much of his life in southern California.