David Hockney

David Hockney was born and raised in Bradford. He went to Bradford College of Art and then the Royal College of Art in London. While a student there, Hockney was featured in the exhibition Young Contemporaries, along with Peter Blake. His early works were influenced by expressionism, similar to works by Francis Bacon. Hockney visited New York in 1963 and made contact with Andy Warhol. He later went to California and he lived there for many years. Because of his visit to California, Hockney was inspired to make a series of paintings of swimming pools in Los Angeles. He used Acrylic medium and a highly realistic style using vibrant colours. In 1967, he won the John Moores Painting Prize at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool for his painting Peter Getting Out Of Nick’s Pool. He made prints and portraits of friends and also did stage designs for the Royal Court Theatre, Glyndebourne, La Scala and the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.

Hockney has also worked with photography. He made photocollages (also known as photomontages), which are different photos put together to look like one picture, between 1970 and 1986. He referred to them as “joiners”. One of his first works of photocollages was of his mother.

Jack Hazan’s film A Bigger Splash was named after Hockney’s swimming pool painting in 1967.

Hockney’s work was displayed at the National Portrait Gallery in London. It contained one of the largest ever displays of Hockney’s portraiture work, including 150 of his paintings, drawings, prints, sketchbooks and photocollages from over fifty years. The exhibition ran from October 2006 to January 2007 and was one of the most successful in the gallery’s history.

 Peter Getting Out Of Nick’s Pool

 A Bigger Splash

Hockney's photmontage of his mother