David Hockney, one of Britain’s best-loved artists, global celebrity, world citizen and bohemian, died “peacefully at home” in London on Thursday, a month before his 89th birthday, his publicist Erica Bolton said in a statement to the press.
Hockney, considered one of the most important figures in contemporary art in both the 20th and 21st centuries First praised as an important contributor to the Pop Art movement of the 1960s.
Always wanting to ‘see more’
Born in Bradford in 1937, David Hockney was the fourth of five children. His favorite place as a child was to sit in the front on the upper floor of a double-decker bus. From there he had the best view of the city and its landscape.
“I always wanted to see more,” the artist said in “Hockney,” a 2015 documentary film about him by director Randall Wright.
In later life, Hockney tirelessly photographed everything around him, capturing scenes of everyday life, sketches of friends, houses, passersby and everything that interested him.
He also spent decades exploring digital tools for his art. He worked with fax machines and color copiers, used his iPhone as a sketchbook and even painted directly on his iPad.
In 2018, the artist created a stained glass window for Westminster Abbey, designing it on his iPad. Inspired by the play of light, he often sat with the instrument in church halls.
In 2022, he created a portrait of singer Harry Styles on the device, which he said at the time was particularly challenging because he loved drawing friends. Even in his old age, Hockney’s interest in new media and projects was admirable.
“I’m always doing something else,” Hockney said. Guardian In a 2022 interview. “Yeah. They can argue all they want about the past, but I just end up on something else.”
a grounded star
Despite his prestigious status, Hockney once said that he considered himself a tireless worker.
He often woke up at dawn because he found the morning light very special. “I find it exciting to see how rain forms into puddles and then how it is painted,” said the artist, who has a special passion for landscape painting. Hockney maintained his artistic curiosity and sense of discovery until his death.
The artist created approximately 2,000 paintings and thousands of photographs and drawings. He often used the latter for studies of larger paintings. The UK painter also achieved fame in the US, where he lived from the 1960s until returning to his hometown in England in 2000. He lived intermittently at his various residences in England and California.
Hockney was a friend of many great artists, including Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg. Like the works of his contemporaries, Hockney’s colorful acrylic works sold for high prices until his death.
In 2018, his “Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)” sold for $90.3 million (€89 million), at the time the highest price paid at auction for a painting by a living artist.
an anarchist with a sense of humor
in an interview with GuardianHockney used his characteristic sense of humor to reveal his inner anarchist. At a meeting in a restaurant, he took two cigarette butts out of his pocket, which turned out to be sculptures from a Berlin gallery.
During the COVID pandemic, Hockney, a lifelong smoker, even claimed that smokers have developed immunity to the coronavirus. the artist wrote a letter The Daily Mail Citing a study in China that proved so.
Hockney smoked only Davidoffs, which are sold primarily in Germany and Switzerland. For the artist, smoking was a symbol of the freedom of the 1960s.
talking to GuardianHe said that this period was “probably the freest time I’ve ever had.” He said that in the last years of his life he realized that time was up.
But the prolific artist, who was celebrated with a major retrospective of his works at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris in 2025, has always been upbeat about life: “If you see the world as beautiful, thrilling and mysterious, as I do, you feel quite alive.”
This article was translated from German.