David Hockney

David Hockney (b. 1937) is one of the most influential British artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, renowned for his innovative engagement with painting, drawing, photography, digital media, and stage design. Emerging as a key figure in British Pop Art in the early 1960s, Hockney’s work blends wit, emotional clarity, and formal experimentation. His early paintings—bold, graphic, and autobiographical—gave way to the serene Californian swimming pool pictures that became icons of postwar art.

Hockney’s practice is underpinned by a profound curiosity about vision and representation. From his photocollages of the 1980s, which break apart linear perspective, to his recent iPad drawings and digital landscapes, he consistently tests how images can be constructed and how technology reshapes perception. His Yorkshire landscapes—large, immersive, and vibrantly colored—reaffirmed his commitment to observational painting.

Major retrospectives at Tate Britain (2017) and the Centre Pompidou (2017) cemented his global significance. His work is held in MoMA, Tate, LACMA, and numerous private collections. Whether exploring intimacy, portraiture, or pictorial space, Hockney remains a restless, joyful innovator whose art questions how and why we see.