David Hockney: A Life in Painting, from Bradford to Los Angeles

David Hockney (1937, Bradford) has died, leaving a legacy as one of the most popular artists of our time. He rose to fame in 1961 as a student at the Royal College of Art, creating iconic paintings before expanding into photography and iPad drawings. His central obsession was the challenge of representation—capturing time and space in two dimensions. In 1964 he first visited Los Angeles, which he called his 'promised land,' and settled in Santa Monica, painting the city's modernist architecture and pools. His 1963 solo show 'Paintings with People' at Kasmin Gallery, London, marked a shift toward domestic, observational portraits. He experimented with Polaroid and 35mm film collages to incorporate multiple viewpoints, influenced by Cubism and Picasso. In the 1990s he explored the use of optical devices like the camera lucida. From 2006 he returned to Yorkshire, painting the changing landscape of the Wolds, and later created multi-screen video installations. His work includes famous pieces like 'A Bigger Splash' (1967) and 'Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)' (1972). Hockney's art constantly questioned how we see, using perspective, color, and line to create a sense of movement and depth.