DAY 445 | David Hockney dies aged 88

Celebrated British artist David Hockney has died aged 88, his publicist has confirmed.

In a statement released today, his publicist Erica Bolton said: "The celebrated British artist David Hockney, one of the most important figures in contemporary art in both the 20th and 21st centuries, passed away peacefully at home on 11 June 2026, one month short of his 89th birthday."

Hockney’s seven-decade career began with his rise to fame in the 1960s through iconic works depicting swimming pools. He went on to create art featuring garden scenes, the Yorkshire woods, his loved ones, and multiple self-portraits throughout his long and distinguished career.

While freely drawing inspiration from the art of the past—from Renaissance masters to the abstract expressionism of Jackson Pollock—Hockney consistently followed his own path and refused to conform to the artistic fashions of the day.

While he was a key figure in the 1960s London scene often labeled as Pop Art, Hockney himself was famously ambivalent about the label, as he was more committed to figurative painting and technical drawing than the commercial/mechanical aesthetic favored by peers like Warhol. His own style was somewhat different, drawing on expressionist elements reminiscent of Francis Bacon.

As an art school rebel, he was initially denied a diploma, partly because he refused to complete an essay assignment, insisting he should be judged on his artwork alone.

At the start of his career, when abstraction dominated the avant-garde, he bucked the trend by painting figuratively, often in bright colors and with a primitivist style.

In later years, when some critics dismissed his embrace of landscape painting as retrograde, he made clear he "didn't give a damn" about such criticism.

Having grown up under the northern skies of industrial Bradford, he was enthralled by the light and freedoms of 1960s California, where he made his main home for 40 years.

As an openly gay man at a time (he came out at age 23) when homosexuality remained illegal in England, he enthusiastically embraced the opportunity to explore his sexuality. He produced a series of paintings featuring naked or semi-naked men, which he later described as "homosexual propaganda."

He said: "I felt it should be done. Nobody else would use it as a subject because it was a part of me. It was a subject I could treat humorously."

Hockney’s later career was defined by a rigorous exploration of technology, transitioning from his photo collages of the 1980s to the extensive use of digital drawing tools. He embraced the iPad and iPhone as serious artistic mediums and utilized these tools to analyze light, color, and perspective with a speed and fluidity that mirrored his earlier mastery of acrylics. 

These digital works, which he frequently printed on large-scale canvases, served as a deliberate technical extension of his lifelong investigation into how the human eye and mind construct an image.

In 2018, his painting Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) sold at auction in New York for $90 million, breaking the then-record for a work by a living artist.

David Hockney is one of my favorite painters.

Hockney, David. The Room, Tarzana, 1967. Acrylic on canvas, 96 × 96 inches (243.8 × 243.8 cm). Private collection. (Reconstruction of colors by ChatGPT)

Hockney, David. Peter Getting Out of Nick’s Pool, 1966. Acrylic on canvas, 152 cm × 152 cm (60 in × 60 in). The Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, United Kingdom. (Reconstruction of colors by ChatGPT)

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