David Hockney - Life

Life

Hockney was born in Bradford, England, on 9 July 1937 to Laura and Kenneth Hockney and was educated first at Wellington Primary School, then Bradford Grammar School, Bradford College of Art and the Royal College of Art in London, where he met R. B. Kitaj. While he was there Hockney said he felt at home, he took pride and success in his work here. While a student at the Royal College of Art, Hockney was featured in the exhibition Young Contemporaries – alongside Peter Blake – that announced the arrival of British Pop art. He was associated with the movement, but his early works also display expressionist elements, not dissimilar to certain works by Francis Bacon. When the RCA said it would not let him graduate in 1962, Hockney drew the sketch The Diploma in protest. He had refused to write the essay required for the final examination, stating that he should be assessed solely on his artworks. Recognising his talent and growing reputation, the RCA changed its regulations and awarded the diploma.

A subsequent visit to California, where he lived for many years, inspired Hockney to make a series of paintings of swimming pools in Los Angeles, using the comparatively new acrylic medium and rendered in a highly realistic style using vibrant colours. The artist moved to Los Angeles in 1964, returned to London in 1968, and from 1973-75 lived in Paris. He moved permanently to Los Angeles in 1978, at first renting the canyon house he currently lives in and later buying the property and expanding it to include his studio. At one point he owned a 1,643-square-foot beach house at 21039 Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, but he sold that in 1999 for around $1.5 million.