Acclaimed British artist David Hockney has died aged 88. His paintings of pools shimmering in Los Angeles sunshine became icons of 20th-century art.
Life and Career
Hockney was born in Bradford, northern England, but lived much of his life in Southern California, making its sun-drenched suburban views a major motif. Later he returned to Europe, finding inspiration in the wooded hills of Yorkshire and fields of Normandy. He became one of the UK's most treasured artists, with works selling for record auction prices.
Historian Simon Schama said the popularity and durability of Hockney's art, through all his shape-shifts and restless experiments, were no mystery. "His work is admired — loved is not too strong a word — by millions who flock to see it because it presupposes an expectation of pleasure," Schama wrote in an essay for a 2025 Hockney exhibition in Paris.
Death and Legacy
Hockney's publicist, Erica Bolton, said he died on Thursday, 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 1960s British and American art scenes. His paintings created a dreamlike world of patterned light bouncing off water and windows, with human forms in flattened shapes.
"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 was born July 9, 1937, in Bradford, and studied at London's Royal College of Art. Art dealer John Kasmin took him into his stable in 1961.
