David Hockney dies at 88
Britain’s best known and most influential contemporary artist, David Hockney, has died aged 88.
Born in Bradford, he studied art at Bradford College - where he sold his first picture, a portrait of his father, for £10 – and emerged from the Royal College of Art in the 1960s as a pop artist, alongside Peter Blake, and in a 60-year career confronted the art-loving public with experimentation, innovation and colour.
His fame began with his series of swimming pool paintings made during his time in Los Angeles, but back in the UK he experimented with perspective, photo-collage, using iPods and making abstract landscape pictures.
Famously gay, he celebrated his homosexuality in his work and was part of the party circuit with the likes of the actor Dennis Hopper, artist Andy Warhol and the designer Ossie Clark.
He turned down a knighthood at least once, and declined to paint a portrait of the Queen but in 2001 published a book challenging perceptions of how great paintings in history were made, Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters
“Just because I’m cheeky” he once said “doesn’t mean I’m not serious.”
Image courtesy Achitectural Digest