David Hockney

David Hockney (b. Bradford, England, 1937) is a British painter and printmaker best known for his California Pool paintings — including A Bigger Splash (1967, acrylic on canvas, 96 × 96 in.) — sun-saturated acrylic works that captured West Coast life and made him one of the defining figures of the 1960s Pop Art movement. Over a career spanning more than six decades, Hockney has worked across acrylic painting, printmaking, photo collage, opera set design, and iPad drawing.

Hockney first gained critical recognition in 1961 with semi-autobiographical paintings depicting gay relationships, shown at the Whitechapel Gallery, London. He relocated to Los Angeles, California, in 1964, a move that proved decisive: the light, architecture, and uninhibited queer social life of Southern California became his defining subject. Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) (1972, acrylic on canvas, 84 × 120 in.) — a double portrait set against a turquoise pool — became his most celebrated single work.

In November 2018, Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) (1972) sold for $90.3 million at Christie's, New York — the highest auction price ever achieved for a work by a living artist at that time.

Key Exhibitions

• David Hockney, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2017
• David Hockney: 82 Portraits and 1 Still-life, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2016
• David Hockney: A Bigger Picture, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2012
• David Hockney: A Retrospective, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, California, 1988

Public Collections

Hockney's work is held in the permanent collections of Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, California; the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands; and the National Portrait Gallery, London.