British artist David Hockney, known for his iconic paintings of pools in Los Angeles, has died at the age of 88.
Artist David Hockney, whose paintings of pools shimmering in the Los Angeles sunshine became icons of 20th-century art, has died at the age of 88, his publicist has announced.
Hockney was born in the north of England but lived much of his life in Southern California, making its sun-drenched suburban views a major motif.
Later in life, he returned to Europe, finding renewed inspiration in the wooded hills of his native county of Yorkshire and the fields and trees of France's Normandy region.
He became one of the UK's most treasured artists, his works selling for record prices at auction.
King Charles paid tribute to his "dear friend", describing Hockney as an "inspiration to so many".
"David was one of life's true originals; one who wore his genius as lightly as those beloved yellow Crocs of his that helped brighten Palace occasions," the King said.
"I trust they will see him tread safely into the hereafter as we mourn a man whose irrepressible charm, talent and constant innovation will be most sorely missed, but whose dazzling creativity lives on in galleries and museums around the world."
Historian Simon Schama said that "the popularity and durability of David Hockney's art, through all his shape-shifts and restlessly inventive experiments, are really no mystery".
"His work is admired — loved is not too strong a word — by the millions who, worldwide, flock to see it because it presupposes an expectation of pleasure," Schama wrote in an essay accompanying a 2025 Hockney exhibition in Paris.
David Hockney drawing on his iPad shortly before his 80th birthday. ( Supplied: Shaughn and John )
Hockney's publicist, Erica Bolton, says he died a few weeks short of his 89th birthday.
With his trademark round glasses and bleached-blond hair, Hockney was a well-known figure in the swinging British and American art scenes of the 1960s, even before he reached the age of 30.
His paintings were just as distinctive, many of them creating a dreamlike world of patterned light bouncing off water and windows, and human forms rendered in flattened, simplified shapes in matte acrylic paint.
"I'm excited every day," he told the Los Angeles Times in 1979.
"London has lots of dreary parts but I never find anything dreary in Los Angeles."
Hockney's early life and influences
David Hockney's Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) sold for more than $US124 million ($176 million) at auction in 2019. ( Supplied: Christie's/David Hockney )
Hockney was born July 9, 1937, in Bradford, a large industrial city whose chief export was woollen textiles.
He spent his first two decades there before going to London's Royal College of Art. He made an impact even before his graduation, and art dealer John Kasmin took him into his stable of artists in 1961.
His artistic influences ranged widely, from Renaissance portraitists to 19th-century English landscape painter J. M. W. Turner, Pablo Picasso's experiments in Cubism and 20th-century American pop art.
Visiting the United States in 1963, Hockney gained notice with his update on "A Rake's Progress," 18th-century artist William Hogarth's series of paintings telling the story of a wealthy cad's escapades and eventual downfall.
The New York Times said in 1964 that Hockney "brings Hogarth up-to-date with a vengeance and furnishes a good example of how younger artists like to marry text and picture with benefit to each".
He shared with other pop artists an interest in the polished surface of modern life. And, like Andy Warhol with his Brillo boxes and Campbell's soup cans, Hockney occasionally incorporated advertising labels, such as a British Typhoo Tea box used in his 1961 "Tea Painting in an Illusionistic Style".
David Hockney poses in front of a stained glass window he designed at Westminster Abbey in 2018. ( Reuters: Victoria Jones )
'I'm just an ordinary artist'
He told The New York Times in 1964 he enjoyed the burgeoning pop art scene in New York but wasn't sure he was part of it.
"I'm just an ordinary artist," he said.
"I do admire American pop — in fact it seems that everything fresh-looking and vital in England these days has been coming from the US."
Nonetheless, he still considered himself "very much an artist in the English tradition," he said in 1995
Even his move to California had a historic precedent, he noted, since earlier generations of English artists had sought out the brilliant light of Italy.
As an openly gay man, Hockney explored erotic themes, giving youthful male bodies the same tender scrutiny that artists had been giving the female nude for centuries. Friends and lovers frequently posed as models, and some images were based on photos in men's bodybuilding magazines.
'You're a rich man if you do the things you want to do'
Early works such as We Two Boys Together Clinging and Two Men in a Shower celebrated gay relationships when homosexuality was still illegal in Britain.
Early in his career, two of his drawings were bought for the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
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Read the full article at ABC News (Australia) →David Hockney, one of the most celebrated and influential British artists of modern times, has died aged 88.
Bias read (Center): The article reports on the death of an artist without any political commentary, framing, or biased language. The subject is cultural and non-political.
British artist David Hockney, known for his iconic paintings of pools in Los Angeles, has died at the age of 88.
Bias read (Center): The article reports on the death of an influential artist without taking a stance or showing bias. It focuses on Hockney's artistic contributions and does not include any politically charged commentary or framing.
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