David Hockney, whose 20th-century paintings of Los Angeles, died Thursday, his spokeswoman Erica Bolton announced. He was 88 years old.
Although born in the dark north of England, Hockney lived most of his life in Southern California, making its sunny suburban landscapes a central motif of his work. As a child, growing up in bleak Bradford, he observed the intense shadows in Hollywood films by Laurel and Hardy (Thick and Lean). “Dark shadows meant a lot of sun,” he recalled in 2009. “So I thought, well, wherever this place is, it’s always sunny.” Two decades later, he moved to Los Angeles, to immerse himself in this blinding light.
The early years, Swinging London and California ‘liberation’
Hockney was born on July 9, 1937 in Bradford, a large industrial city in England, to an accountant father and a devout Methodist mother. From his student years, he rebelled against convention. He gave his abstract paintings titles such as ‘Going to be a Queen for Tonight’ and ‘Doll Boy’, at a time when homosexuality in Britain was punishable by imprisonment.
FILE PHOTO: British artist David Hockney is interviewed in front of his painting “The Group V” at a preview of his exhibition “Painting and Photography” at the L.A. Louver gallery in Venice, Los Angeles, California, United States July 15, 2015. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson/File Photo
In 1959, he moved to London to study at the Royal College of Art, where he experienced a meteoric rise in the British Pop Art movement and mingled with stars of the day, from the dancer Rudolf Nureyev to Mick Jagger. With his signature round glasses, platinum hair and shiny gold jacket, he became an icon of the ‘Swinging Sixties’.
However, he longed for the vibrancy he saw in the works of American artists. He visited New York for the first time in 1961 – where he befriended Andy Warhol – and moved to California three years later. “I had spent the first 20 years of my life in the gothic darkness of the North. Here I felt free”, he had declared.
“I’m excited every day,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 1979. “London has a lot of sad places, but I don’t find anything sad in Los Angeles.”
The iconic pools and the records of millions
His paintings of swimming pools and naked men in showers became icons of a lifestyle bathed in light, which he captured in bright acrylic colors.
FILE PHOTO: British painter David Hockney, 52, stands in front of one of his paintings “A Closer Grand Canyon, 1998” after a press conference to announce an exhibition of his work at Georges Pompidou Center in Paris, January 25. The exhibition which will open on January 28 and close on April 26 gathers together more than fifty masterpieces on a surface of almost 1000 square meters. PW/WS/File Photo
Although some techno critics initially called his work “superficial”, Hockney gained more fame than any other British artist of his time. The prices of his works at auctions reached record levels. In 2018, the famous 1972 painting ‘Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)’ was sold at a Christie’s auction for , making it the world’s most expensive living artist at the time.
Despite his enormous success and wealth, he remained unassuming. “Actually I’m still a student,” he said. “I just happen to have enough credit cards in my pocket.”
“You don’t quit it, you do it till you drop”
As he grew older, his subject matter changed. In the 90s, with many of his friends losing their lives to the scourge of AIDS, men were replaced in his works by his beloved dachshunds.
Later, he returned to Europe to be near his elderly mother. He settled in the seaside town of Bridlington, on the shores of the North Sea, where he found new inspiration in the woods and hills of his native Yorkshire. This proved to be the most productive period of his career as he rushed to capture the dramatic changes of the times.
FILE PHOTO: British artist David Hockney poses in front of a detail of his painting “The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire in 2011 (twenty-eleven)” at the Royal Academy of Arts in London January 16, 2012. The Royal Academy will exhibit new landscape works by Hockney in an exhibition from January 21 to April 9. REUTERS/Luke MacGregor (BRITAIN – Tags: ENTERTAINMENT SOCIETY)/File Photo
Always an innovator, Hockney did not limit himself to painting. He dealt with photography, collages, sets for the opera, while in recent years he embraced technology, creating works on iPad, which became his favorite tool.
In 2018, he bought a farm in Normandy, France. During the 2020 coronavirus quarantine, he created happy spring designs on the iPad for his friends. His message – “Remember, they can’t cancel spring” – dominated in neon lighting the facade of the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris during the 2025 grand exhibition.
The “Picasso of our time” and the uncompromising spirit
Art curator Norman Rosenthal has called Hockney “the Picasso of our time”, emphasizing that he is an incredibly popular artist whose work changed the way we see things. In 1997, Queen Elizabeth II awarded him the title of “Companion of Honour”, a distinction limited to only 65 eminent personalities.
FILE PHOTO: Britain’s Queen Elizabeth presents artist David Hockney with the Order of Merit at Buckingham Palace, in central London May 22, 2012. Hockney’s appointment follows the death in 2011 of Lucian Freud, the only painter in the order ? which has no more than 24 members at one time. REUTERS/Steve Parsons/Pool (BRITAIN – Tags: ENTERTAINMENT SOCIETY ROYALS)/File Photo
To the end, Hockney remained an unrepentant smoker who flouted anti-smoking rules while dealing with his health problems (a minor stroke in 2012 and gradual hearing loss) with humor. “If you lose one sense, you gain others, and I feel like I could see the space more clearly,” he said.
FILE PHOTO: British artist and pro-smoking campaigner David Hockney smokes a cigarette during the annual Labour party conference in Brighton September 28, 2005. Hockney will later speak at a fringe meeting and attack the government’s plan to ban smoking in most public places. REUTERS/Russell Boyce/File Photo
He never stopped working, guided by a strict work ethic he had developed since his youth. “My work is what keeps me young,” he used to say. “I have been a professional painter for 60 years. 60 years of waking up every day and doing exactly what I want to do.”
