David Hockney died last week, his death perhaps overshadowed by world events. However, Hockney was a major contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960s and considered one of the most influential British artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. He was known for his vivid, stylized realism and championed figurative work, often in a bold style.
David Hockney was born in Yorkshire, England, in 1937, the fourth of five children to an accountant’s clerk, who had been a conscientious objector in WWII and a devout Methodist and strict vegetarian.
Hockney studied at the Royal COllege of Art in London before moving to Los Angeles in the 1960s. The light and lifestyle of California had a profound effect on his work; using acrylic paint, he worked on large portrait studies before turning to prints and photo collages in his later career. He used digital applications extensively in the final decades of his career.
When the RCA said it would not let him graduate if he did not complete an assignment of a life drawing of a live model in 1962, Hockney painted Life Painting for a Diploma (6 x 6’) in protest.
He had refused to write an essay required for the final examination and said that he should be assessed solely on his artworks. Recognizing his talent and growing reputation, the RCA changed its regulations and awarded him a diploma.
Hockney came out as gay when he was 23, while studying at the Royal College, seven years before the Sexual Offenses Act 1967 decriminalized homosexual acts between men over 21. Hockney explored the nature of gay love in his work, such as in the 1961 painting We Two Boys Together Clinging (4 x 5’ oil on board). In 1963, he painted two men together in the painting Domestic Scene, Los Angeles, (5 x 5”) oil on canvas one showering while the other washes his back.
In 1964 Hockney moved to Los Angeles, where he was inspired to make a series of paintings of swimming pools in the comparatively new acrylic medium using vibrant colors. He lived at various times in Los Angeles, London, and Paris from the late 1960s to 1970s. In 1978, he rented a home in the Hollywood Hills; he later bought and expanded the house to include his studio. He also owned a beach house in Malibu, which he sold in 1999 for about $1.5 million. In the 1990s, Hockney returned more often to Yorkshire. Hockney set up residence and studio in the seaside town of Bridlington. In 2019, he created a studio in a rustic farmhouse in Normandy. He spent a year there, using a sketchpad and an iPad to work outside, painting the changing seasons in a series of images inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry. 1
Hockney returned to painting portraits throughout his career. From 1968, and for the next few years, he painted portraits and double portraits of friends, lovers, and relatives just under life-size. Hockney turned to his own figure year after year, creating over 300 self-portraits.
In 2017, David Hockney was presented at Tate Britain, becoming the most-visited exhibition in the gallery’s history. The exhibition marked Hockney’s 80th year. The wildly popular retrospective landed among the top ten ticketed exhibitions in London and Paris for 2017 with over 4,000 visitors per day at the Tate and over 5,000 visitors per day in Paris.
Hockney owned residences and studios in Bridlington and London, as well as two residences in California where he had lived intermittently, one in the Hollywood Hills and the one in Malibu. He had an office and stored his archives in West Hollywood. His longtime companion was Jean-Pierre Gonçalves de Lima, also known as JP, who worked with Hockney in his studio as his chief assistant.
In 2013, Hockney’s 23-year-old assistant died after ingesting drain cleaner at Hockney’s Bridlington studio; he had earlier taken drugs and alcohol. Two years later, Hockney sold his house in Bridlington and moved to Normandy, where he lived until 2023, before returning to London.
Hockney experienced hearing loss since the 1970s and used hearing aids since 1979, although he realized he was going deaf several years earlier. He also described having synaesthetic associations between sound, color and shape. Hockney maintained a daily swimming routine and reported being able to stand for extended periods while working at his easel.
When Hockney died at his home in London on 11 June 2026, aged 88, King Charles III, an artist himself, paid tribute to him, describing him as “a giant of the world of art and painting, a Yorkshireman through and through, and a dear friend and inspiration to so many.”
Hockney received numerous awards and distinctions recognizing his contributions to painting, photography, and the visual arts. He declined knighthood in 1990. In 2012, Hockney was appointed to the Order of Merit (OM) and was voted Britain’s most influential artist in a poll of 1,000 British artists. Again, he is considered one of the most influential British artists of the 20th and 21st centuries
Many of Hockney’s works are housed in his hometown of Bradford. His works are in numerous public and private collections worldwide, including: The Art Museum of Chicago, J. Paul Getty Museum, in Los Angeles, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York City, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, in Washington, D.C. Hockney has received numerous awards and distinctions recognizing his contributions to painting, photography, and the visual arts,
In 2006, Hockney’s painting The Splash sold for £2.6 million. It was offered for auction again in 2020, with an estimate of £20–30 million and sold to an unknown buyer for £23.1 million. In recent years, Hockney’s iPad drawings have become the most successful segment of his print market. Print prices: Current auction record of £762,000 in 2025. ($1,021,781.04)!
Beverly Hills Housewife (1966–1967) is a 12-foot-long acrylic diptych that depicts the collector and philanthropist Betty Freeman in LA, standing on the patio of her luxury home, by her pool. She is in a long hot-pink dress, positioned slightly off-center, surrounded by interior details such as an antelope head and a zebra-print Corbusier lounger. It sold for $7.9 million at Christie’s in New York in 2008, a record price for a Hockney.
Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures 1972
In 2018, Hockney’s 1972 work Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) sold at Christie’s auction house in New York City for $90 million, becoming the most expensive artwork by a living artist sold at auction.
1 The Bayeux Tapestry is embroidered cloth nearly 230 feet and 20 inches
tall that depicts the events leading up to the Norman Conquest of
England, in 1066.
