David Hockney dies aged 88, the artist who painted gay intimacy before it was legal
David Hockney has died aged 88 (Image: Getty)
British artist David Hockney has died aged 88, leaving behind a groundbreaking record of gay life depicted with unusual openness in a Britain where homosexuality remained a criminal offence until 1967.
Born in Bradford in 1937, Hockney rose to prominence as a pop artist in the 1960s and built a six-decade career that refused to be pinned to one style. His early paintings challenged conservative attitudes, including works that portrayed queer desire and intimacy at a time when it was still illegal.
He later became closely associated with sunlit California imagery, particularly swimming pool scenes that helped define a Los Angeles aesthetic. Works such as A Bigger Splash and Portrait of an Artist (Pool With Two Figures) captured “love, lust and loss” under bright skies, while cementing his place in popular visual culture.
Early life and defiant work
Hockney was the fourth of five children in what he described as a “radical working-class family”. After studying art at Bradford College, he sold his first painting, a portrait of his father, for £10 at the Yorkshire Artists Exhibition in 1957.
A conscientious objector, he completed two years of national service as a hospital orderly before enrolling at London’s Royal College of Art in 1959. He developed a reputation for challenging convention, including pushing back against the school’s rules around graduation requirements.
Records, innovation and personal loss
After moving to Los Angeles in the mid-1960s, Hockney’s work gained acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic. In November 2018, his 1972 painting Portrait of an Artist (Pool With Two Figures) sold for $90.3m (£70.2m) at Christie’s, a world record for a living artist at the time.
He continued working after a stroke in 2012 that temporarily impaired his speech. Hockney also explored new ways of making images, from photo-collage “joiners” to digital drawing. In a 2013 Interview magazine conversation, he said: “I’m really only interested in technology that is about pictures,” and, “I’m interested in anything that makes a picture.”
