Portrait
David Hockney
Born
9 July 1937Bradford, England
Died
11 June 2026London, England · aged 88
PainterUnited Kingdom

David Hockney

He made gay relationships an open subject of painting and kept finding new ways to depict people, places and looking itself.

David Hockney was born in Bradford, England, in 1937. He studied at Bradford School of Art and the Royal College of Art in London, where paintings such as “We Two Boys Together Clinging” (1961) made male desire visible before sex between men was decriminalised in England and Wales.

A move to Los Angeles in 1964 opened a new visual world. Swimming pools, modern houses and men in Californian sunlight became enduring subjects. “A Bigger Splash” (1967) turned a fleeting disturbance in water into an image of extraordinary stillness.

Hockney’s experiments extended to photographic collages, opera sets, Yorkshire landscapes and drawings made on an iPad. Changing tools allowed him to keep questioning how a picture can represent space, time and the experience of looking.

Openly gay, he also opposed Section 28, which restricted the supposed promotion of homosexuality by local authorities. His paintings of lovers and friends made intimacy part of ordinary visual life rather than a hidden exception. Hockney died at home in London on 11 June 2026, aged 88. Museums and collections across the world preserve the range of a career that continued across more than six decades.

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