David Hockney Biography
David Hockney (1937 - ) is an English painter, photographer and set designer, first associated with the Pop Art movement, and later famous for his intimate portraits and naturalistic scenes of both the everyday and the artificial of California life. Hockney was born in Bradford, England, and studied at the Bradford School of Art, exhibiting an extraordinary aptitude for drawing. He subsequently attended the London Royal College of Art, where he met fellow student R.B. Kitaj (1932-2007), who greatly influenced him and inspired Hockney to infuse personal expressiveness into his works. Hockney's early works include common and commercial images, such as tea boxes, which caused his early inclusion in the Pop Art movement. Hockney also favored a mix of literature and scandalous subject matter in his early works, including pieces about homosexuality inspired to the poems of Walt Whitman created in the Art Brut style of Jean Dubuffet. His mature work often draws on photographs, particularly after regularly visiting California in the 1960s, where he created flat, serene-looking nature paintings, including his famous pool series. He works in many mediums, including set design and photography. Hockney has held major retrospectives at the Royal College of Art in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He currently lives and works in California.
