David Hockney, the revolutionary British painter, has died. He was 88 years old.
The artist’s publicist confirmed his death in a statement to BBC News on Friday. It read: “The famous British artist David Hockney, one of the most important figures in contemporary art of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, died peacefully at his home on June 11, 2026, one month before his eighty-ninth birthday.”
The cause of death was not immediately provided. He is survived by his partner, Jean-Pierre Gonçalves de Lima.
Hockney was already one of the most influential figures in the art world, working in paint, photography and lithography. He made a name for himself during the 1960s and 1970s, and his iconic poolside photos would turn him into a major star in Los Angeles, where Hockney bought a house in 1964. He was not intimidated by modern media and, in recent years, has taken his talent to the iPad.
In 2018, one of his paintings that he painted in 1972 in a swimming pool, Portrait of the artist (combined with two figures) A piece rich in greens, blues and sunlight shimmering on the water sold for nearly £70 million ($94 million) at a New York City auction, a record for a living artist. “I’d rather live in colour” is one of his most quoted sayings.
Born in 1937, Yorkshire grew up in Bradford and was educated at Wellington Primary School before honing his artistic talent at the Royal College of Art in London. There Hockney appeared at the exhibition New contemporariesmarking the arrival of British Pop Art, and its early display of Expressionism would draw comparisons to Francis Bacon.
Hockney spent teaching stints at Maidstone College of Art, the University of Iowa, and the University of Colorado in the mid-1960s. From 1966 to 1967, he taught at the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of California, Berkeley.
Upon moving to Los Angeles, he was inspired to make a series of swimming pool portraits using vibrant acrylic paint – works that would make him a household name – all the while dividing his time between Los Angeles, London and Paris, as well as Yorkshire in the 1990s to visit his mother. These trips home became more regular as he grew older, and would provide inspiration for various pieces, including the 2006 collection. Between Kelham and Langtoft And 2011 Spring arrives in Woldgate.
They often photographed the scenic countryside. Hockney said The Guardian In 2009 about painting in nature: “When you really look at nature like I did… I mean truly Look, then you quickly realize that we are just insects, stupid little creatures. “You get a little humbling. They cut down some of the trees I was painting. They cut down some of the trees I was painting,” he said. You were angry at first, but then you realized you had another issue: He died, right? Wood is always alive, if you look.”
Throughout his celebrated career, Hockney experimented with various art forms: printmaking, collage, and drawing on iPhones and iPads – including an iPad sketch that formed the basis of a design for a stained-glass window in Westminster Abbey, celebrating the late Queen Elizabeth II. In an interview with BBC Click in 2010, Hockney said of working on the iPad: “The other great new thing here […] It is the distribution of the image. This is completely new. And the fact that I was able to draw a sunrise at 6am and at 7am, and sent it to 20 people that very morning and at 8am and they all liked it…. They got a very new sunrise photo from me two hours ago. If I had a pencil and paper next to my bed, the sun wouldn’t be so interesting.”
He gave much of his time to theater design, and it was his first foray into this field Obu Roy at London’s Royal Court Theater in 1966. Hockney designed opera sets for the prestigious Glyndebourne Festival Opera and even costumes for performances at the Met in New York. This work continued through the 1980s and into the 1990s. In 2017, he was awarded the San Francisco Opera Medal.
Hockney appeared in more than 400 solo exhibitions during his lifetime, such as the National Portrait Gallery in 2006 and the Royal Academy Gallery. Bigger picture In 2012, it attracted more than 600,000 visitors in just three months. Bigger picture It moved to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, before moving to the Ludwig Museum in Cologne.
Four months ago in 2017, an exhibition was held simply titled David Hockney It was presented to the Tate Britain gallery in London – and became the most visited in the building’s history. Regarding the news of his death, the director of the Tate Britain Museum, Alex Farquharson, said that the institute “feels very sad.”
He continued: “David was an endlessly creative artist with a unique vision of the world.” “He was always completely himself and fearless, both in his work and in his life. He taught us about the joy of looking, of seeing things that the rest of us failed to notice – and his witty, sharp observations were a constant presence in his work and in person… The loss in the art world is enormous.” He added that the gallery is working with Hockney’s team “to complete the two projects he was working on in the coming year.”
A critically acclaimed artist, Hockney has won hundreds of awards. He even declined a knighthood, but later accepted one of Britain’s highest honors, the Order of Merit, out of respect for the then Queen.
Hockney was a strong supporter of smoking, and in 2005, he fought to stop a ban on smoking in pubs and restaurants in the UK. Two years later, at a party celebrating his 70th birthday at the Tate, smoke alarms were turned off for about 10 minutes to allow the beloved painter to smoke a cigarette. “Smoking calms me down,” Hockney said. “It’s fun. I don’t want politicians to decide what’s interesting in my life.”
In 2015, he sold his house and studio in Bridlington, Yorkshire, and lived for a while in Normandy, France. Hockney returned to London in 2023, and is said to have maintained his daily swimming routine. He has suffered from hearing loss his entire life, and has used hearing aids since the early 1970s.
Condolences in the UK and around the world began pouring in on Friday morning following news of Hockney’s death. London Mayor Sadiq Khan said Hockney was a “true icon”. Khan described him as “a revolutionary in British art who never stopped reinventing his work… and I know his legacy will live on for centuries to come.” Elsewhere, Piers Morgan said Hockney was “one of the greatest British artists of all time”. He wrote on the website
The Center Pompidou in Paris – where Hockney will appear in two major exhibitions – said he was “without a doubt one of the key figures in contemporary art”. Art historian Richard Morris wrote on
