David Hockney, iconic British artist, dies at 88

David Hockney, whose sun-drenched paintings of Los Angeles swimming pools became icons of 20th-century art, died Thursday at his home.irishexaminer
Across seven decades, Hockney pushed creative boundaries — from photo-collages to iPad paintings — and his work once set the auction record for a living artist.irishexaminer
He had been painting daily at his farmhouse in Normandy and had a major exhibition running at London’s Serpentine North Gallery at the time of his death.serpentinegalleries

British Artist David Hockney Dies at 88

David Hockney, one of Britain’s most celebrated artists, whose paintings of Los Angeles swimming pools shimmering in the California sunshine became icons of 20th-century art, died on Thursday at his home. He was 88.

His publicist, Erica Bolton, confirmed the death in a statement to the Press Association, saying Hockney “passed away peacefully at home on 11 June 2026, one month short of his 89th birthday.” The statement described him as “one of the most important figures in contemporary art in both the 20th and 21st centuries” and said his legacy reflects “his underlying enthusiasm for life, his outstanding sense of humour, his immense generosity, and his investigative curiosity encapsulated by his signature phrase, Love Life.”irishexaminer

A Life in Colour

Born on July 9, 1937, in Bradford, a large industrial city in northern England, Hockney decided at age 11 that he wanted to be an artist. He studied at the Royal College of Art in London, where he clashed with authorities who nearly denied him his diploma — only to relent and award him the prestigious gold medal for painting.irishexaminer

His move to Los Angeles in 1964 proved transformative. Enthralled by the brilliant sunlight and freedoms of California, he produced works such as A Bigger Splash that seemed to encapsulate the allure of what he called the “promised land.” “The moment I got to America I thought ‘This is the place,'” he once recalled.wftv

An openly gay man at a time when homosexuality was still illegal in England, Hockney embraced the opportunity to explore his sexuality through his art, producing paintings he later described as “homosexual propaganda.”irishexaminer

Restless Innovation

Across a seven-decade career, Hockney proved restlessly inventive. He experimented with photo-collage techniques in the 1980s, created hundreds of pictures on his iPad in the 2000s, and turned to landscape painting in his native Yorkshire, where a 2012 Royal Academy exhibition attracted 600,000 visitors. In 2018, his Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) sold at auction for $90 million, then a record for a living artist.irishexaminer

Historian Simon Schama wrote that “his work is admired — loved is not too strong a word — by the millions who, worldwide, flock to see it because it presupposes an expectation of pleasure.”wftv

In his final years, Hockney retreated to an isolated farmhouse in Normandy, where he continued painting four to six hours a day despite requiring round-the-clock nursing care. An exhibition at the Serpentine North Gallery in London, which opened in March, had been showcasing his work at the time of his death.serpentinegalleries

“I’m happiest when I’m painting,” he once said. “If I can paint every day I don’t care about anything else.”irishexaminer