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David Hockney, The Dancers V, 27 August - 4 September, 2014, acrylic on canvas, 48" x 72" (121.9 cm x 182.9 cm) © 2019 David Hockney

David Hockney

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b. 1937, Bradford, England
d. 2026, London

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David Hockney produced some of the most vividly recognizable images of the twentieth century.

Influenced early on by Picasso’s stylistic innovations as well as by Francis Bacon’s use of the male body and compositional framing devices, Hockney’s exploration of figuration and abstraction revealed a fundamental interest in the representation of pictorial space. His aesthetic pursuits stretched across a vast range of media, from the traditions of painting and printmaking to full-scale opera stagings, photographic collage, and the incorporation of digital technologies such as fax machines, video, and iPads. Spanning practice and theory, Hockney’s investigation of artistic techniques developed through art-historical research, resulting in Secret Knowledge (2001), his publication on the optical devices used by the Old Masters.

Hockney received formal training at the Bradford School of Art (1953–1957), where he studied landscapes, portraiture, and drawing from life. After graduating, he spent two years completing his National Service as a hospital orderly before enrolling at the Royal College of Art in London (1959–1962), where he studied under Roger de Grey and Ceri Richards. During his time at the college, Hockney was exposed to the works of visiting artists including Francis Bacon and Richard Hamilton, and became aware of Abstract Expressionist artists as well as the work of Pablo Picasso and Jean Dubuffet. 

By the end of 1961, Hockney had participated in seven group exhibitions, including Young Contemporaries, held at R.B.A. Galleries, London (1960, 1961), which heralded the arrival of British Pop art. He was also included in New Painting 1958–61,organized by the Arts Council of Great Britain, which traveled to the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (1961); and in the second Paris Biennale (1961). During this time, he took his first trip to New York, where he met William S. Lieberman, then-curator of prints at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, which acquired two of his prints. Graduating from the Royal College of Art the following year, Hockney was awarded its gold medal (1962). He continued the exploration of both figuration and abstraction, producing paintings with double figures in domestic scenes. At the age of twenty-six, he received his first solo exhibition, Pictures with People In, at Kasmin Gallery, London (1963), which effectively thrust him into the spotlight. He traveled to New York the same year, meeting Andy Warhol and Dennis Hopper, and then made his first visit to Los Angeles, where he settled the following year.

While in Los Angeles, Hockney began to use acrylic paint, producing stylized landscape paintings as well as his first swimming pool paintings. While reinvigorating the art-historical trope of the bather, this subject would become synonymous with Hockney’s oeuvre, and the luxurious Californian atmosphere continued to inspire much of his work. He made his North American debut with a solo exhibition of paintings at Alan Gallery, New York (1964), and proceeded to hold teaching positions through the remainder of the ’60s at the University of Iowa (1964); University of Colorado, Boulder (1965); University of California, Los Angeles (1966–67); and the University of California, Berkeley (1967). 

Most artists, good artists, trust their intuition. I trust mine. Sometimes it leads you to make mistakes, but that hardly matters…There is no such thing as failure, you just learn from it and go on. That’s the way I see it.

David Hockney

Along with printmaking and painting, Hockney introduced photography into his practice, using it both as artistic medium and an aide-mémoire for his paintings. He also expanded his practice to include costume and set design, beginning with designs for Alfred Jarry’s production of Ubu Roi at the Royal Court Theater, London (1966). He traveled extensively, taking a road trip across the United States before traveling to London, Egypt, and Beirut. By the end of the decade, he received his first major retrospective, which opened at Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (1970), and traveled to museums in Hannover, West Germany; Rotterdam; and Belgrade, Serbia. 

Throughout the following two decades, Hockney’s experimentation led him to Cubist investigations comprising composite photographic collages, which culminated in over 350 works and an exhibition at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (1982). He continued to explore digital technologies, using computers, photocopiers, and fax machines as new means to produce images, which ultimately led to his examination of portraiture through video in 1990. Although Hockney’s ambitious and multifaceted approach led him to embrace a range of methods and technologies, his work remained rooted in painting. In 2004, he began to produce watercolors based on the pastoral setting of his native East Yorkshire. He continued to celebrate this landscape through plein air drawings in charcoal, iPad drawings, video, and large-scale multi-canvas paintings, coming together in the exhibition A Bigger Picture (2012), which was organized by the Royal Academy, London, and traveled to Museo Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain and Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany.

Hockney has been the subject of 400 solo exhibitions worldwide, including several retrospectives, notably one organized in 1988 by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art that subsequently traveled to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and Tate, London. In 1993 the South Bank Centre, London, organized an exhibition of his early etchings, Illustrations for Six Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm, 1969, which traveled for seventeen years (1993–2010) to over 100 venues across the United Kingdom. Important recent exhibitions include his retrospective at the Tate Britain, London (2017), which traveled to the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; David Hockney, Seoul Museum of Art (2019);David Hockney: Drawing from Life, The Morgan Library and Museum, New York (2021); A Year in Normandie, Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris (2022); David Hockney, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (2023); Drawing from Life, National Portrait Gallery, London (2023); and David Hockney: Paper Trails, Modern Art Museum Shanghai, China (2024). In 2018, an exhibition of Hockney’s work was hosted by the Kunsthalle Helsinki, Finland, and in 2019, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam hosted Hockney – Van Gogh: The Joy of Nature and the Seoul Museum of Art, in collaboration with Tate, London, mounted a survey titled David Hockney. In 2020, the Royal Academy of Arts, London presented The Arrival of Spring, Normandy 2020, which traveled to the Bozar Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels (2022), and The Art Institute of Chicago (2020–2023). In 2025, Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris mounted David Hockney 25, a monumental retrospective bringing together more than 400 of his works from 1955 to 2025. Hockney’s work has been featured in the Biennale de Paris (1961, 1963, 1985, 1989); Biennale of Prints, National Museum of Art, Tokyo (1962); International Biennale, Hong Kong (1963); Carnegie International, Pittsburgh (1967, 1982); Biennale de São Paulo (1967, 1975); Venice Biennale (1968, 1989, 1995); Documenta, Kassel (1968, 1977, 2005); and the Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial, New York (2004).

Hockney’s works are held in public collections worldwide, including the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Louisiana Museum of Art, Humlebæk, Denmark; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museu Coleção Berardo, Lisbon; Museo Tamayo, Mexico City; Museum Boijmans–van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tehran; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; National Portrait Gallery, London; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Tate, London; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, among others.

Hockney has received accolades throughout his career, including nine honorary degrees from international academic institutions. Among his honors, Hockney received a Guinness Award (1961), was elected Associate Member of the Royal Academy of Arts in London (1986), and made an Associate Member of the Académie Royale, Brussels (1987). He was made a Foreign Honorary Member by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1997. In the same year he was awarded the Order of the Companion of Honour by Queen Elizabeth II, as well as the Culture Prize of the German Society for Photography, Germany’s highest award in the field of photography. In 2003 he was bestowed with the Lorenzo de’ Medici Lifetime Career Award at the Florence Biennale. Hockney was appointed to the Order of Merit by Queen Elizabeth II in 2012.

David Hockney has been represented by Pace since 2008. Significant exhibitions of his work at the gallery include Paintings 2006–2009 (2009); The Arrival of Spring (2014, 2015); Some New Painting (and Photography) (2014–2015); The Yosemite Suite(2016, 2017); Something New in Painting (and Photography) [and even Printing] (2018); La Grande Cour, Normandy (2019); Ma Normandie (2021); 20 Flowers and Some Bigger Pictures (2023); and David Hockney: The Moon Room (2026).

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David Hockney, In the Studio, December 2017, 2017, photographic drawing printed on 7 sheets of paper, mounted on 7 sheets of Dibond, sheet size: 109-1/2" x 42-3/4", each 9' 1-1/2" × 24' 11-1/4" (278.1 cm × 760.1 cm), overall installation dimensions © 2019 David Hockney

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David Hockney, Self Portrait II, 14 March 2012, 2012, iPad drawing printed on paper, 37" × 28" (94 cm × 71.1 cm), Edition of 25 © 2019 David Hockney

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David Hockney, Oranges, 2011, iPad drawing printed on paper, 37" × 28" (94 cm × 71.1 cm), Edition of 25 © 2019 David Hockney