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About

David Hockney, CH, RA, (born July 9, 1937) is an English artist, based in Los Angeles, California, United States. An important contributor to the British Pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century.

Hockney was born in Bradford and educated at Bradford Grammar School, Bradford College of Art and the Royal College of Art in London, where he met R. B. Kitaj. While still at the Royal College of Art, Hockney was featured in the exhibition Young Contemporaries, alongside Peter Blake, that announced the arrival of British Pop Art. He became associated with pop art, but his early works also display expressionist elements, not dissimilar to certain works by Francis Bacon. Sometimes, as in We Two Boys Together Clinging (1961), named after a poem by Walt Whitman, these works make reference to his homosexuality. From 1963 Hockney was represented by the influential art dealer John Kasmin. In 1963 Hockney visited New York, making contact with Andy Warhol. Later, a visit to California, where he settled, inspired Hockney to make a series of oil paintings of swimming pools in Los Angeles. These are executed in a more realistic style and use vibrant colours. He also made prints, portraits of friends, and stage designs for the Royal Court Theatre, Glyndebourne, La Scala and the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.

Hockney studied lithography in art school in Bradford, Yorkshire. His first print was Myself and My Heroes (1961), where he appears beside a haloed Gandhi and Walt Whitman. His first major project in printmaking was a series of sixteen etchings where he represents Hogarth's A Rake's Progress autobiographically. In the 1960s in California, he created with Ken Tyler another series of prints titled A Hollywood Collection. Many of his lithographs are portraits of his friends, most frequently of them Celia Birtwell. In 1970-1 Hockney painted Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy a double portrait of Celia Birtwell and her then husband the fashion designer Ossie Clark in their Notting Hill home. The painting has become one of the most popular in the collection of the Tate Gallery and was voted as one of the UK's most favourite paintings in a 2005 poll carried out by BBC Radio 4. His first prints during the 1980s were two big lithographs of Celia published by Gemini G.E.L. (the studio started by Ken Tyler) in 1982). Hockney also made two etchings honoring Pablo Picasso, whose work he admired and was influenced by, after Picasso's death in 1973.

In an unusual use of paintings, the opening credits of the 1978 Neil Simon film, California Suite, based on his play of the same name, show a leisurely display of about a dozen California-themed Hockney paintings.

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• Medium: a
• Date: 2000
• Size: b
• Added by nmayweather
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