Born in 1937 at Bradford (Yorkshire, United Kingdom)
Between 1953 and 1957 he studied at the Bradford School of Art.
A conscientious objector, he spent his National Service working in a hospital until 1959.
From 1959 to 1962 he studied at the Royal College of Art, London. Here he met R. B. Kitaj and other founders of English Pop Art, and saw American Abstract Expressionist paintings.
From 1960 he began showing in the Young Contemporaries exhibitions at the RBA Galleries and read the Complete Works of Walt Whitman.
By 1961 he had done his first Tea Paintings and Love Paintings, painted compositions consisting of consumer goods images and psychograms. More than any others, these pictures showed his proximity to Pop Art.
In 1961 he was represented at the Paris Biennale and awarded the Guiness Award for Etching. He also visited New York for the first time. He taught at Maidstone College of Art in 1962.
In 1963 he travelled to Egypt and Los Angeles, where he met Henry Geldzahler, Andy Warhol and Dennis Hopper. He did his first paintings of showers at this time.
From 1963 to 1964 he taught at the University of Iowa.
In 1964 he settled in Los Angeles, painted his first swimming-pool pictures and made his first polaroids.
From 1965 to 1967 he held teaching posts at the University of Colorado and the University of California, Berkeley.
In 1967 he travelled to Italy and France, and in 1968 to Germany and Ireland.
He had a retrospective exhibition in London in 1970, also shown at Hanover and Rotterdam.
Between 1973 and 1975 he lived in Paris. An exhibition of his works was shown at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in 1974. He designed the set for Igor Stravinsky's "The Rake's Progress" in 1975.
In 1976 he returned to Los Angeles and worked intensively with photography.
In 1978 he designed the décor for Mozart's "The Magic Flute", produced at the Glyndebourne Festival, and
in 1980 he developed a program for the Metropolitan Opera with works by Satie, Poulenc, Ravel and Stravinsky.
In 1981 he travelled in China, following which China Diary (with Stephen Spender) was published by Thames and Hudson.
He designed covers for VOGUE in 1984 and 1985, the set for Wagner's "Tristan and Isolde" at the Los Angeles Music Center in 1986-87, and carpet patterns for a company in 1988.


1937 David Hockney wird am 9. Juli in Bradford, Yorkshire, geboren.
1957 Abschluß der Kunstschule in Bradford.
1959 - 1962 Studium am Royal College of Art in London, Abschluß mit Auszeichnung.
Hockney beteiligt sich mit Gemälden und Zeichnungen an mehreren Gruppenausstellungen.
Reise nach Italien, München und Berlin.
1964 Umzug nach Los Angeles.
Erste Gemälde von Swimming Pools.
Lehrauftrag an der University of Iowa.
Reisen durch mehrere Bundesstaaten.
1965 - 1967 Lehrauftrag an der University of Colorado in Bolder.
Farbige Lithographien, Bühnenbilder für das Royal Court Theater in London.
Lehrauftrag an der University of California, Los Angeles.
Erste Photographien.
1968 - 1972 Reise durch die Vereinigten Staaten,
Gastprofessur an der Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Hamburg.
Reisen nach Marokko, den Vereinigten Staaten, Frankreich, Japan und Südostasien.
Photographie wird als Medium relevant.
1973 - 1977 Umzug für 2 Jahre nach Paris, Arbeit mit neuen druckgraphischen Techniken.
Reise durch die Vereinigten Staaten, Australien und die Südsee.
1978 - 1981 endgültige Übersiedlung nach Los Angeles.
Intensive Arbeit an Bühnenbildern und Kostümausstattungen für Opernhäuser.
Reise nach China.
1982 - 1984 Fast ausschließlich Photographie,
ab 1984 wieder Malerei und Lithographie.
1985 - 1989 Experimente mit Computergraphik und Farbphotokopierer.
1992 Ehrendoktortitel des Royal College of Art in London.
1994 - 1996 Porträtzeichnungen, Gouachen, Dackel-Gemälde und "abstract paintings".
1997 Blumenstilleben, Porträts von Freunden, Selbstporträts.
Hockney empfängt von der Königin den "Order of the Companion of Honour".
Aufenthalt in Yorkshire und Entstehung zahlreicher Photos als Grundlage für Collagen.

Wichtige Einzelausstellungen der Hockney-Bilder und Graphiken fanden u.a.
1963, 1970, 1979 und 1981 in London statt;
1964, 1973 und 1979 in New York;
1966 in Amsterdam;
1974, 1975, 1976 in Paris und
1976 in Kopenhagen.
Von 1978 - 80 organisierten die International Exhibitions Foundation in Washington D.C. und
1980 die Tate Gallery in London je eine große Präsentation.
Eine große Hockney- Retrospektive fand 1988 als Premierestation im Los Angeles County Museum of Art statt, danach im Metropolitan Museum, New York und der Tate Gallery, London.
Sein photographisches Werk wurde 1982 im Pariser Centre Pompidou gezeigt.
Hockneys Fax-Arbeiten waren 1989 auf der Biennale in Sao Paulo und in weiteren internationalen Ausstellungen zu sehen.
1995 richtete die Hamburger Kunsthalle eine große Retrospektive seiner Zeichnungen aus, die anschließend in der Royal Academy of Arts in London und im Los Angeles County Museum of Art gezeigt wurde.
Die Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie ehrte Hockney am 19.12.97 im Rahmen der Ausstellungseröffnung im Museum Ludwig, Köln, mit dem Kulturpreis 1997

Hockney, David (1937- ). British painter, draughtsman, printmaker, photographer, and designer. After a brilliant prize-winning career as a student at the Royal College of Art, Hockney had achieved international success by the time he was in his mid-20s, and has since consolidated his position as by far the best-known British artist of his generation. His phenomenal success has been based not only on the flair, wit, and versatility of his work, but also on his colorful personality, which has made him a recognizable figure even to people not particularly interested in art: a film about him entitled A Bigger Splash (1974) enjoyed considerable popularity in the commercial cinema.
His early paintings, often almost jokey in mood, gained him a reputation of leading Pop artist, although he himself rejected the label. In the late 1960s he turned to a weightier, more traditionally representational manner, in which he has painted some striking portraits (Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy, Tate, London, 1970-01). He has spent much of his time in the USA, and the Californian swimming pool has been one of his favourite themes („A Bigger Splash“, Tate, 1967). Often his work has a strong homo-erotic content. Hockney is a brilliant draughtsman and has been as outstanding as a graphic artist as he has as a painter, his work in this field including etched illustrations to Cavafy's Poems (1967) and Six Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm (1969). In the 1970s he came to the fore also as a stage designer, notably with his set and costume designs for Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress and Mozart's The Magic Flute produced at Glyndebourne in 1975 and 1978 respectively. The broader style demanded by stage design is reflected in his most recent easel paintings. In the 1980s he has experimented much with photography, producing, for example, photographic collages and -- since 1986 -- prints created on photocopiers. Hockney is a perceptive commentator on art and in 1976 published a book on his own work, David Hockney by David Hockney.
Technically, it is true to say that the Pop movement started with Richard Hamilton and David Hockney in England. Hockney's early work made superb use of the popular magazine-style images on which much of Pop Art is based. However, when Hockney moved to California in the 1960s, he responded with such artistic depth to the sea, sun, sky, young men, and luxury that his art took on a wholly new, increasingly naturalistic dimension. Though one might consider „A Bigger Splash“ a simplistic rather than a simplified view of the world, it nevertheless creates a delightful interplay between the stolid pink verticals of a Los Angeles setting and the exuberance of spray as the unseen diver enters the pool. There is no visible human presence here, just that lonely, empty chair and a bare, almost frozen world. Yet that wild white splash can only come from another human, and a great deal of Hockney's psyche is involved in the mix of lucidity and confusion of this picture



British Landscapes on View for First Time in U.S.;
Grand Canyon Paintings on Exhibit for First Time
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Mass. (April 7, 1998) - The latest paintings by David Hockney (b. 1937) make their U.S. premiere at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. On view in the Museum’s Rabb Gallery from April 24 - August 23, 1998, New Paintings by David Hockney is the first time a group of the six of artist’s bold British landscapes are on view outside England, and the first exhibition of two of his latest studies of the Grand Canyon. Both the British landscapes and the Grand Canyon paintings are powerful works which convey Hockney’s inexhaustible inventiveness.

New Paintings by David Hockney is organized for the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston by Barbara Stern Shapiro, acting curator for contemporary art. The exhibition is sponsored by Putnam Investments.
“The range and creativity of David Hockney’s works amazes audiences around the world,” said Malcolm Rogers, Ann and Graham Gund Director of the MFA. “I am thrilled that the MFA is the first museum in the United States to show Hockney’s vibrant British landscapes, and the first to show his magnificent new Grand Canyon studies.”
David Hockney, born and raised in the West Yorkshire town of Bradford, explores the countryside of his childhood in his series of British landscape paintings. In 1987, Jonathan Silver, a friend of Hockney’s and fellow Yorkshireman, began converting a decrepit textile factory into an arts center in Saltaire, England, about three miles from where Hockney was raised. In July 1997, Hockney traveled back to his home country of Yorkshire to be near his friend, who was desperately ill. While working in his studio in Bridlington, England, Hockney drove regularly to Saltaire to visit Silver, who, for years, had encouraged Hockney to paint his native countryside. During the two-hour drive, Hockney was acutely aware of the brick houses, roads that soared toward the horizon, and cultivated fields. The ability to see for long distances in Yorkshire was like the “intense visual pleasure” Hockney experienced on a drive from his adopted hometown of Los Angeles en route to Santa Fe. His British landscape paintings celebrate the unlikely comparison between Hockney’s view of the American West and the Yorkshire coast. When Silver died at the end of the summer, Hockney memorialized his friend by showing six of his new Yorkshire landscapes in Salts Mill.
“I see more color in the landscape than most,” says Hockney, and the new British works reflect his long-standing adoration of brilliant hues and constantly shifting perspectives. The Road Across the Wolds (1997) combines honeyed yellows, golden oranges, and lush greens into a patchwork quilt of British countryside farms. The Road to York Through Sledmere (1997) quite literally places the viewer in the driver’s seat, speeding by red brick houses toward rural areas outside the city’s center. The great size of these works (most are 4’ x 5’, but two are more than 10’ long) heightens the intensity of the experience.
“In this new British landscape series, Hockney infuses the Yorkshire countryside with his trademark bold colors,” stated Barbara Stern Shapiro. “He continues to explore new territories - whether as a photographer, printmaker, or painter - while keeping constant a vocabulary of expressive colors and shapes.”
David Hockney is as fascinated by the vast beauty of the Grand Canyon as he is of the expansive space in northern England. The British landscape paintings are joined in this exhibition by two even more recent studies of the Grand Canyon, on view for the first time. These two works are each created from a mosaic of small canvases placed together to form the finished product. Nine canvases form one painting which measures 3’ x 5.5’, and fifteen canvases create the 5.5’ x 5.5’ painting. Hockney first visited the Grand Canyon in 1964, and the huge, dramatic space of the Grand Canyon plays a special role amongst his landscapes.
Hockney’s work has been influenced by many of the greatest artists of our time. He attributes the flair and versatility of his work - as a draftsman, photographer, printmaker, designer and painter - to the great European masters, such as Picasso, van Gogh, and Matisse. Using the vividly contrasting colors of the Fauve artists, Hockney developed his own inimitable and lively style which expands on their characteristic use of bold brushstrokes and non-naturalistic colors. With further inspiration provided by the late paintings of Picasso, Hockney established his own distinctive and exuberant mode of expression. His Yorkshire works expand upon his development as an artist, while exploring the world of his childhood.

Stangos, Nikos (ed.), David Hockney by David Hockney: my early years, (Thames and Hudson, 1988)
Stangos, Nikos (ed.), David Hockney: paper pools, (Thames and Hudson, 1980)
Friedman, Martin, Hockney paints the stage, (Thames and Hudson, 1983)
Livingstone, Marco, David Hockney, (Thames and Hudson, 1987)
Weschler, Lawrence, David Hockney cameraworks, (Thames and Hudson, 1984)
Hockney, David, The blue guitar etchings, (Petersburg Press)