Remembering David Hockney

Pace is profoundly saddened to announce the loss of celebrated artist David Hockney—one of the most important figures in contemporary art in both the 20th and 21st centuries—on June 11, 2026, one month short of his 89th birthday. Hockney’s seven-decade career and prolific oeuvre was characterized by his multi-media approach to image making, an intellectual inquiry into the nature of depiction and perspective, and a sustained commitment to celebrating and portraying the world around him.

Hockney's formal training began at the Bradford School of Art (1953–57), followed by the Royal College of Art in London (1959–62), where he graduated with Gold Medal distinction and subsequently emerged as one of the seminal talents in the new generation of British artists.

The 1960s marked a pivotal shift in the development of Hockney’s distinctive artistic style as he moved away from early experiments with Abstract Expressionism toward figuration and linear mark making, two approaches that were unfashionable at the time. Following his move from London to Los Angeles in 1964, he began to document the city’s seductive charm from the perspective of an outsider. This new environment inspired his iconic renderings of the Southern Californian lifestyle, including Beverly Hills Housewife (1966) as well as his celebrated swimming pool series, most notably A Bigger Splash (1967), both widely acclaimed as canonical works. His subject matter at the time frequently explored themes of intimacy, leading to large-scale double portraits. Photography became an important preparatory tool in these works and in paintings such as Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) (1972), though Hockney later came to feel that this approach was too reliant on photorealism and no longer used photography for portraits.

The mid-1960s also marked the start of Hockney’s enduring contributions to opera and theater design. His comprehensive stage designs often involved intense periods of concentration, sometimes extending a year or more on a single production. Beginning with Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi (1966) for London’s Royal Court Theater, Hockney went on to create a series of landmark productions, including the iconic staging of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress (1975) for Glyndebourne, and Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot (1990) for LA Opera. Many of his designs, spanning ten opera and ballet productions, are regarded as the definitive visual interpretation of the works and continue to be presented decades after their premieres.

Central to Hockney’s argument was the idea that many artists had employed camera obscura, concave mirrors, lenses, and, later on, camera lucida as optical aids to project images onto a surface, allowing them to trace or closely follow contours and tonal effects. He argued that the ability to capture photographic likeness through light and shadow existed centuries before the chemical invention of photography in 1839 (often confused as the invention of the camera). Hockney also observed that convincing cast shadows and highly naturalistic modeling began to appear in Western painting around the 1420s, suggesting a significant shift in how artists represented space, light, and visual reality. He was one of the first people to point out there had never been any shadows or reflections outside of Western art prior to 1420.

These investigations culminated in Secret Knowledge (2001), otherwise known as the Hockney/Falco Thesis, in which Hockney and Charles Falco, a professor of optical science, presented a comprehensive theory regarding the use of optical aids by the old masters. The book established Hockney as an important contributor to debates in art history and the history of technology. It was initially met with strong skepticism by most established art historians and curators, who implied lack of evidence and that Hockney was suggesting the old masters “cheated.” However, the thesis has since been examined, tested, and further developed by a younger generation of scholars, sustaining discussion about the role of optics in the development of Western art and agreeing with Hockney’s comment, “Brunelleschi didn’t invent perspective, he just discovered there was a law of optics.”

In the early 2000s, Hockney’s return to Yorkshire prompted a renewed engagement with the landscapes of his native country, portrayed in the intensive Midsummer: East Yorkshire watercolor series (2004) and ambitious, multi-canvas oil paintings, most notably Bigger Trees near Warter (2007). The emergence of digital technologies, specifically the iPhone and iPad, became central to Hockney’s practice from 2007 onward. He embraced these tools for immediacy and plein air drawing, resulting in the vast series The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire, in 2011 (twenty eleven). 

In 2013, he moved back to Los Angeles following personal tragedy, which triggered the start of the 82 portraits and 1 Still Life series and numerous new works.

In 2017, Hockney was honored to be invited by the Dean of Westminster Abbey to produce the stained-glass Queen’s Window in honor of Queen Elizabeth II, which was unveiled in October 2018.

In 2019, Hockney started working at his partner’s house and new studio in Normandy and rediscovered the lush landscape and four seasons after years in LA, producing ink drawings, paintings, and numerous iPad paintings, including his iPad frieze A Year In Normandie (2020–2021), the ninety-meter-long panoramic iPad painting, inspired by the nearby Bayeux Tapestry and his long-time fascination with Chinese scrolls, further demonstrating his commitment to pushing the expressive possibilities of digital media while remaining deeply engaged with the traditions of landscape painting.

After relocating to London in 2023, his legacy was celebrated by major international shows, including the pioneering 360-degree immersive projection film Bigger & Closer (not smaller & further away) at London’s Lightroom (2023), which continues to travel worldwide, Normandism at the Musée des Beaux-Arts Rouen (2024), where the Moon Room iPad drawings were first featured, and culminating in the monumental David Hockney 25 at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris (2025). 

On his return from the Paris exhibition, Hockney immediately returned to painting—with vigor—producing two new shows in London: Some Very, Very, Very New Paintings Not Yet Shown in Paris in November 2025 at Annely Juda Fine Art; and a show of A Year in Normandie and ten new works at Serpentine North Gallery, (on view through the end of August). These shows revealed the most developed stage yet of Hockney’s exploration of “reverse perspective” as a pictorial device. 

Among the many honors bestowed upon Hockney over the course of his seven-decade career, he was appointed by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II to the Order of the Companions of Honour in 1997 and to the Order of Merit in 2012. In 2026, Hockney became one of the few non-French citizens to be awarded the rank of Officier in France’s prestigious Légion d’Honneur, granted through exceptional merit and in recognition of his profound contributions to the country through his work.

From traditional media such as drawing, painting, printmaking, set design, and photography to evolving media including photocopiers and fax machines, computers, iPhone and iPad drawing, and stained glass, Hockney synthesized exceptional draftsmanship with keen observation, a sophisticated understanding of art history coupled with an embrace of modern technology. These extensive explorations later influenced the expression he adopted, “the hand, the eye, and the heart,” rooted in an ancient Chinese proverb to articulate the sentiment that painting requires the integration of all three components, firmly believing that “two won't do.”

David Hockney’s enduring legacy reflects his underlying enthusiasm for life, his outstanding sense of humor, his immense generosity, and his investigative curiosity encapsulated by his signature phrase, “love life.”

Pace has represented Hockney since 2008 and has mounted ten solo exhibitions of his work around the world, most recently The Moon Room at the gallery’s 540 West 25th Street location in New York.