{"id":733,"date":"2026-06-12T10:08:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T10:08:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/topmovingpross.com\/?p=733"},"modified":"2026-06-12T10:08:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T10:08:13","slug":"david-hockney-artist-renowned-for-his-pool-scenes-has-died-at-88","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/topmovingpross.com\/?p=733","title":{"rendered":"David Hockney, artist renowned for his pool scenes, has died at 88"},"content":{"rendered":"
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LONDON (AP) \u2014 Artist David Hockney<\/span><\/span>, whose paintings of pools shimmering in the Los Angeles sunshine became icons of 20th-century art, died Thursday, his publicist said. He was 88.<\/p>\n

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Hockney was born in the north of England but lived much of his life in Southern California, making its sun-drenched suburban views a major motif.<\/p>\n

Later in life he returned to Europe, finding renewed inspiration in the wooded hills of his native county of Yorkshire and the fields and trees of France\u2019s Normandy region. He became one of the U.K.\u2019s most treasured artists, his works selling for record prices at auction.<\/p>\n

Historian Simon Schama said that \u201cthe popularity and durability of David Hockney\u2019s art, through all his shape-shifts and restlessly inventive experiments, are really no mystery.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cHis work is admired \u2014 loved is not too strong a word \u2014 by the millions who, worldwide, flock to see it because it presupposes an expectation of pleasure,\u201d Schama wrote in an essay accompanying a 2025 Hockney exhibition in Paris.<\/p>\n

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Hockney\u2019s publicist, Erica Bolton, says he died a few weeks short of his 89th birthday.<\/p>\n

With his trademark round glasses and bleached-blond hair, Hockney was a well-known figure in the swinging British and American art scenes of the 1960s, even before he reached the age of 30. His paintings were just as distinctive, many of them creating a dreamlike world of patterned light bouncing off water and windows, and human forms rendered in flattened, simplified shapes in matte acrylic paint.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m excited every day,\u201d he told the Los Angeles Times in 1979. \u201cLondon has lots of dreary parts but I never find anything dreary in Los Angeles.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hockney\u2019s early life and influences<\/h2>\n

Hockney was born July 9, 1937, in Bradford, a large industrial city whose chief export was woolen textiles. He spent his first two decades there before going to London\u2019s Royal College of Art. He made an impact even before his graduation, and art dealer John Kasmin took him into his stable of artists in 1961.<\/p>\n

His artistic influences ranged widely, from Renaissance portraitists to 19th-century English landscape painter J.M.W. Turner, Pablo Picasso\u2019s experiments in Cubism and 20th-century American pop art.<\/p>\n

Visiting the United States in 1963-64, Hockney gained notice with his update on \u201cA Rake\u2019s Progress,\u201d 18th-century artist William Hogarth\u2019s series of paintings telling the story of a wealthy cad\u2019s escapades and eventual downfall. The New York Times said in 1964 that Hockney \u201cbrings Hogarth up-to-date with a vengeance and furnishes a good example of how younger artists like to marry text and picture with benefit to each.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2018Just an ordinary artist\u2019<\/h2>\n

He shared with other pop artists an interest in the polished surface of modern life. And, like Andy Warhol with his Brillo boxes and Campbell\u2019s soup cans, Hockney occasionally incorporated advertising labels, such as a British Typhoo Tea box used in his 1961 \u201cTea Painting in an Illusionistic Style.\u201d<\/p>\n

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He told The New York Times in 1964 he enjoyed the burgeoning pop art scene in New York but wasn\u2019t sure he was part of it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just an ordinary artist,\u201d he said. \u201cI do admire American pop \u2014 in fact it seems that everything fresh-looking and vital in England these days has been coming from the U.S.\u201d Nonetheless, he still considered himself \u201cvery much an artist in the English tradition,\u201d he said in 1995. <\/p>\n

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Even his move to California had a historic precedent, he noted, since earlier generations of English artists had sought out the brilliant light of Italy.<\/p>\n

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As an openly gay man, Hockney explored erotic themes, giving youthful male bodies the same tender scrutiny that artists had been giving the female nude for centuries. Friends and lovers frequently posed as models, and some images were based on photos in men\u2019s bodybuilding magazines.<\/p>\n

Early works like \u201cWe Two Boys Together Clinging\u201d and \u201cTwo Men in a Shower\u201d celebrated gay relationships when homosexuality was still illegal in Britain.<\/p>\n

Early in his career, two of his drawings were bought for the Museum of Modern Art in New York.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe moment I first sold pictures to earn a living, I felt rich. I\u2019ve been rich ever since,\u201d he told The Associated Press in 1995. \u201cI didn\u2019t have much money but I did what I wanted. … You are a rich man if you do the things you want to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

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That freedom brought Hockney acclaim and wealth, with his works fetching record-breaking sums. In 2018, his 1972 painting \u201cPortrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)\u201d<\/span> sold at a Christie\u2019s auction for $90.3 million, at the time a record for a living artist. In February 2020 another pool painting, \u201cThe Splash,\u201d<\/span> from 1966, sold at Sotheby\u2019s for 23.1 million pounds ($30 million).<\/p>\n

While paintings of pools were a Hockney trademark, he also literally painted a pool when he decorated the bottom of the swimming pool at the historic Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

While many of his best-known paintings had American scenes, he also tackled British subjects. He immortalized his parents in several portraits. \u201cMr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy,\u201d a 1971 dual portrait of two of his English friends and their cat, was ranked No. 5 in a 2005 BBC Radio-National Gallery (London) online poll of the greatest paintings in Britain. It was the only work by a living painter in the top 10.<\/p>\n

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Like many traditional artists, he considering drawing a fundamental skill and lamented that it wasn\u2019t taught as rigorously as it used to be.<\/p>\n

\u201cHuman beings are the most interesting things we see, so they\u2019re the hardest to draw,\u201d he said in a 1996 AP interview, adding that the best drawings are made when there is empathy between the artist and subject. <\/p>\n

His work went beyond drawing and painting<\/h2>\n

He didn\u2019t limit himself to drawing and painting, though. He contributed costume and set designs for theater and the opera, including a celebrated production of \u201cTristan und Isolde\u201d first staged in 1987 at the Los Angeles Opera.<\/p>\n

Always an innovator, Hockney embraced drawing, painting, printmaking, photo collage and video in a seven-decade career.<\/p>\n

When he took up photography, he fused genres, assembling individual photos into elaborate collages like \u201cPearblossom Highway, 11-18th April, 1986,\u201d built up of individual views of a desert highway intersection.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy photographer friends said it was a painting,\u201d Hockney told the AP in 2001. \u201cI said it\u2019s a photograph; I used a camera.\u201d<\/p>\n

The insight he gained from his photo work led him to research and write a 2001 book, \u201cSecret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters.\u201d He argued that through the centuries, artists used lenses and other optical devices to aid them in drawing much more often than most historians believe.<\/p>\n

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Later he began to draw on iPads<\/span>, which became his favorite tool.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Artist David Hockney has died at 88. His paintings of pools shimmering in the Los Angeles sunshine became icons of 20th-century art. Hockney was born in the north of England but lived much of his life in Southern California, making its sun-drenched suburban views a major motif. Later in life he returned to Europe, finding renewed inspiration in the wooded hills of his native county of Yorkshire and the fields and trees of France\u2019s Normandy region. He became one of the U.K.\u2019s most treasured artists, his works selling for record prices at auction. Hockney’s publicist said he died Thursday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":732,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"yoast_head":"\nDavid Hockney, artist renowned for his pool scenes, has died at 88 - Top Moving Pros<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/topmovingpross.com\/?p=733\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"David Hockney, artist renowned for his pool scenes, has died at 88 - Top Moving Pros\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Artist David Hockney has died at 88. His paintings of pools shimmering in the Los Angeles sunshine became icons of 20th-century art. Hockney was born in the north of England but lived much of his life in Southern California, making its sun-drenched suburban views a major motif. Later in life he returned to Europe, finding renewed inspiration in the wooded hills of his native county of Yorkshire and the fields and trees of France\u2019s Normandy region. He became one of the U.K.\u2019s most treasured artists, his works selling for record prices at auction. 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