David Hockney, revolutionary British artist, dies aged 88 | David Hockney
Iconic British painter David Hockney, who took a revolutionary look at 20th century art, has died at the age of 88.
He made his name as a pop artist in the ’60s and was perhaps best known for his swimming pool paintings that helped define the Los Angeles aesthetic. Works such as A Bigger Splash and Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) depicted hedonistic scenes of love, lust, and loss taking place under sunny city skies.
But Hockney’s six-decade career cannot be defined by a single period. He produced perspective-shifting portraits using photo collage, experimented with abstract landscape paintings, and later in life explored the possibilities of creating artworks from the emerging 3D technology.
British prime minister Keir Starmer was among the first to pay tribute to Hockney. “The Prime Minister was saddened to hear of the death of David Hockney, one of Britain’s most famous artists,” a spokesman said.
“His vibrant, instantly recognizable work has influenced generations of artists, and the prime minister’s thoughts are with his friends and family.”
In the statement made by Hockney representatives, the following statements were made: “Famous British artist David Hockney, one of the most important names of contemporary art in both the 20th and 21st centuries, passed away peacefully at his home on June 11, 2026, one month before his 89th birthday.”
He added: “David Hockney’s enduring legacy reflects his essential enthusiasm for life, his extraordinary sense of humour, his enormous generosity and his investigative curiosity, summed up in his signature phrase: Love Life.
“Details of the commemorations will follow in due course.”
Alex Farquharson, director of the Tate Britain art gallery in London, described Hockney as a “hugely important figure”.
“David was a hugely creative artist with a unique vision of the world,” Farquharson told the BBC.
“In both his work and his life, he was always completely and boldly himself. He taught us the joy of looking, of seeing things the rest of us fail to notice; his wit and keen observations were a constant presence in his work and personally.”
“The loss to the art world is enormous: David’s passing brings to an end an extraordinary body of work characterized by reinvention.”
Tate plans to stage a major exhibition of the artist’s work at Tate Britain next year, as well as a multimedia installation in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, and has said it will continue to work with Hockney’s team to ensure both move forward.
The Pompidou Center in Paris, with which Hockney collaborated on two major exhibitions, described him as “unquestionably one of the most important figures in contemporary art”.
He added that the works he left behind remain “dazzling, vibrant and immortal.”
Born in Bradford, West Yorkshire, in 1937, Hockney was the fourth of five children born into what he described as a “radical working-class family”. His parents encouraged their son’s early artistic promise. He studied art at Bradford College and sold his first painting – a portrait of his father – for £10 at the Yorkshire Artists’ Exhibition in 1957.
A conscientious objector, he completed two years of national service as a hospital officer before enrolling at London’s Royal College of Art in 1959. Although he had a rebellious streak, he quickly gained a reputation as a unique talent. His refusal to do a life drawing of a female model nearly prevented him from graduating; pointedly, he submitted Life Drawing for Diploma from an American physics magazine, depicting a muscular male figure. Hockney also refused to write a paper required for the final exam, believing that he should be judged solely on his works of art. Aware of the talent it has trained, RCA bent its rules to give him a diploma.
This was the beginning of a career in which Hockney did not shy away from challenging conservative society. His 1961 painting We Two Boys Together Clinging, named after a Walt Whitman poem, was the first indication of this. The follow-up, 1962’s Teeth Cleaning, Early Evening (10pm), with its phallic Colgate tubes and chains like W11, would depict homosexual life with an honesty and openness almost entirely at odds with Britain, where homosexuality remained a criminal offense until 1967.
With his distinctive light blond hair, round, thick-rimmed glasses and a cigarette dangling from his lip, Hockney became a figure on the party circuit of the 60s in London and the US. He gained fame as a playboy and flâneur, attending parties with Andy Warhol, Ossie Clark and Dennis Hopper. While he lived the pleasure-filled life of a drug-taking bohemian, he never lost sight of his strong Yorkshire work ethic. He continued to work even after a stroke in 2012 that temporarily prevented him from speaking.
After moving to Los Angeles in the mid-60s, his more mature and restrained works were admired for their ability to convey deep and complex emotions on canvas. Man in the Shower in Beverly Hills (1964) saw the artist making progress as he moved towards a more realistic style. In November 2018, Hockney’s 1972 masterpiece Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) sold for $90.3 million (£70.2 million) at Christie’s; this was a world record for a living artist at the time. Inspired by Hockney’s breakup with his lover, the work fascinated critics; including the Guardian’s Jonathan Jones, who described the work in the same year as “a tranquil distillation of love and sadness”.
While working on one of his L.A. paintings, Hockney took a series of reference photographs with a Polaroid camera and serendipitously stumbled upon the next phase of his career: photocollage, or “carpenters,” as he calls them. By combining multiple photographs, Hockney was able to explore his fascination with perspective. The portraits created by his mother and British art dealer John Kasmin showed a strong cubist influence, drawing comparisons to his idol Picasso.
In later years Hockney experimented in many new areas, including set and costume design for opera and ballet. Emerging technology fascinated the artist: As his career developed, his art took advantage of the photocopier, fax machine, printer and iPad; The iPad allowed him to create masses of digital images that he would enthusiastically email to friends and acquaintances. But his technological interests always came back to one thing: “I’m really only interested in technology that has to do with images,” he told Interview magazine in 2013. “I’m interested in everything that makes up the picture.”
An avid smoker throughout his life, Hockney argued that smoking was beneficial to mental health. Writing in the Guardian in 2007, he described the impending smoking ban in the UK as “the most bizarre piece of social engineering”.
He moved back to Yorkshire from Los Angeles in 2005, but tragedy struck in 2013 when his 23-year-old assistant Dominic Elliott was found dead at his home in Bridlington. Elliott was found to have consumed drain cleaner from the home after taking a number of recreational drugs, including ecstasy and cocaine. The medical examiner ruled that Elliott died as a result of misfortune. Following Elliott’s death, Hockney said he had been considering giving up art altogether for a while because he was unable to draw.
Hockney is thought to have turned down the knighthood on several occasions and once rejected an invitation to paint the queen’s portrait. His iconoclasm was also reflected in his 2001 book Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters; In this book he challenged established thinking about how the great paintings of the past might have been created. He managed to both anger and delight critics and art historians.
“Teaching people to draw is teaching people to look at people,” he told the Yorkshire Post in 2018. And his art has had an undeniably profound impact on the way we view the 20th century;
“I don’t think too much,” he told the Guardian’s Simon Hattenstone in 2015. “I live in the present moment. It’s always now.”
