{"id":491709,"date":"2026-06-14T02:29:19","date_gmt":"2026-06-14T02:29:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/491709\/"},"modified":"2026-06-14T02:29:19","modified_gmt":"2026-06-14T02:29:19","slug":"painter-david-hockney-who-made-the-everyday-otherworldly-dies-at-88","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/491709\/","title":{"rendered":"Painter David Hockney, Who Made the Everyday Otherworldly, Dies at 88"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Hockney, long regarded as one of Britain\u2019s greatest contemporary painters, died yesterday, June 11, at his home in London, aged 88. His survivors include his partner, Jean-Pierre Gon\u00e7alves de Lima, and his brothers, John and Philip Hockney. His death was announced by his publicist. <\/p>\n

Best known for paintings that imbued the everyday with an otherworldly stillness, psychologically precise portraits, and crystalline pool scenes, Hockney also explored printmaking, photography \u2014\u00a0even stage design for ballet and opera \u2014 across his prolific career of more than half a century. He was a restless experimenter, using computer graphics in his work as early as the 1980s and exploring digital painting on his iPad late in life. He was a pioneer of LGBTQ+ rights \u2014\u00a0one of the first popular artists to create work depicting gay relationships, and one of the few to publicly denounce censorship of queer imagery.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"David Hockney, “Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)” (1972), acrylic on canvas (\u00a9 David Hockney; photo by and courtesy Jonathan Wilkinson)<\/p>\n

His colorful, stark paintings of sunny California poolsides captured a distinctive 1960s cool \u2014\u00a0simultaneously carefree and erotic, with darkness and yearning lurking beneath those pristine blue surfaces. \u201cPortrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)\u201d (1972) \u2014 one of his most iconic paintings, which broke auction records when it sold<\/a> for $90.3 million in 2018 \u2014\u00a0depicts a man in a pink jacket, lush greenery behind, looking down into the light-streaked pool, where another hovers underwater.<\/p>\n

Born in 1937 in Bradford, England, Hockney was raised in a working-class family as one of five siblings. His father restored baby carriages and campaigned against nuclear arms, passing down to his son a pacifist streak and Labour Party loyalty, while his mother became a frequent subject of his paintings. In 1953, he won a scholarship to the local Bradford School of Art, studying there through 1957. In 1954, at age 17, he made a self-portrait in collaged newsprint, scrutinizing himself with sober, ferocious intensity. His talent was apparent: \u201cThe colors are already promising \u2014 or threatening \u2014 to blaze out of control,\u201d critic Michael Glover wrote in a review<\/a> for this magazine, \u201cto shape and define the emotional temperature of the whole.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"David Hockney, \u201cMy Parents\u201d (1977) (photo Olivia McEwan\/Hyperallergic)<\/p>\n

Between 1959 and ’62, Hockney attended the Royal College of Art in London, where he sharpened already formidable draftsmanship skills and tried out and discarded various styles, from Hogarth-inspired perspective to Picasso-esque figuration. He began the first of many visits to the United States in 1961, drawn by what he perceived as a less sexually repressive environment than the United Kingdom. He went on to split his time between the two countries and teach at colleges in the US between 1964 and ’67, including in Iowa, Colorado, and California.<\/p>\n

Hockney often captured the same people \u2014 his once-lover Peter Schlesinger, assistant Mo McDermott, gallerist John Kasmin, fashion illustrator Celia Birtwell \u2014 over and over again in psychologically sharp portraits over decades, chronicling them as they aged from fresh-faced youth to hard-weathered maturity in styles academic, loose, and experimental. In \u201cMr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy\u201d (1970\u201371), one of the many double portraits he made, Birtwell stands proudly before the closed shutter of a balcony window in a royal-purple robe, while designer Ossie Clark lounges before the open side, his bare feet buried in a shag carpet.<\/p>\n

\"\"David Hockney, “Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy” (1970\u201371), acrylic on canvas (\u00a9 David Hockney; photo by and courtesy Jonathan Wilkinson)<\/p>\n

He first visited California in 1964, where he met Schlesinger, one of his most enduring subjects, as seen in \u201cPortrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)\u201d and “Peter Getting Out of Nick’s Pool,” which earned him the John Moores prize<\/a> in 1967, the same year the British government decriminalized homosexuality. Jack Hazan\u2019s semi-fictionalized documentary<\/a>, A Bigger Splash (1974) \u2014\u00a0which Hockney initially recoiled at before coming to appreciate \u2014\u00a0dramatized and chronicled their break-up. In 1978, Hockney settled in Los Angeles, where he would live for several decades.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought I was a hedonist at the time, but when I look back I was always working,” Hockney told the Guardian in a 2015 interview<\/a>. “I am always working.”<\/p>\n

\"\"David Hockney painting “Woldgate Woods III” in 2006 (\u00a9 David Hockney; photo by and courtesy Jean-Pierre Gon\u00e7alves de Lima)<\/p>\n

In the 1970s, Hockney started incorporating photographs \u2014\u00a0which he had long used as reference images for his paintings \u2014 into collages. He continued his experiments with one-point perspective into the 1980s, creating intricate images out of many Polaroid pictures arranged in a grid. One work from 1982 depicts his mother in a rainy graveyard, his own feet visible in the foreground, a moving portrait of widowhood. In the 1990s, Hockney turned his attention toward abstract landscapes and returned to his hometown of Yorkshire in the 2000s, where he began to chronicle the English countryside.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Eventually, Hockney became a household name. He painted a portrait<\/a> of British pop star Harry Styles in 2022 for a show at the National Portrait Gallery that opened in 2023 after delays due to COVID-19. In 2024, the National Gallery of Art in London paired<\/a> Hockney with 15th-century painter Piero della Francesca, an homage both to the institution\u2019s 200th birthday and Hockney\u2019s longtime love and use of the collection.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"David Hockney in 2011 (photo Carl Court\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Hockney received numerous honors and accolades, turning down British knighthood in the 1990s and receiving the Order of Merit, the nation\u2019s highest royal award in the arts, in 2012. He was the subject of major solo exhibitions at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1970, when he was in his early 30s; the Mus\u00e9e des Arts D\u00e9coratifs in Paris in 1974; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Tate in 1988. In celebration of his 80th birthday in 2017, a retrospective<\/a> traveled to The Met, Centre Pompidou, and Tate Britain \u2014\u00a0where it became the institution’s most-visited to date. A blockbuster exhibition<\/a> consisting of more than 400 works at the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris closed less than a year ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“He was always completely and courageously himself, both in his work and in life,” Alex Farquharson, director of Tate Britain, wrote on Instagram<\/a>. “He taught us about the joy of looking, seeing things the rest of us failed to notice – his witty and sharp observations a constant presence within his work and in person.”<\/p>\n

Hockney worked until the very end, even as he began to lose his hearing and started using a wheelchair. As Glover wrote: \u201cYou do what you can. He does what he does. What else is there? The key is: don\u2019t stop until the darkness descends.\u201d<\/p>\n