David Hockney, Pioneering British Artist Who Celebrated Gay Life and Los Angeles, Dies at 88

David Hockney, born in Bradford, England on July 9, 1937, died Thursday at his London home, confirmed by his publicist Erica Bolton. A student at the Royal College of Art in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Hockney first gained attention for boldly depicting same-sex relationships at a time when homosexuality remained a criminal offence in the UK, with works such as 'We Two Boys Together Clinging' (1961) drawing on Walt Whitman's poetry. His first visit to California in 1963–64 transformed his style and subject matter, leading to the iconic swimming pool paintings — including 'A Bigger Splash' (1967) and 'Peter Getting Out of Nick's Pool' (1966) — that made him internationally famous. Hockney went on to experiment relentlessly across media, producing photographic collages, large-scale multipanel Yorkshire landscapes, opera set designs, and, from 2010 onward, iPad drawings. His 1972 painting 'Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)' sold at Christie's in 2018 for a record $90.3 million for a living artist, and his 2017 Tate Britain retrospective drew nearly half a million visitors. Critics and admirers alike noted that his work combined joyful celebration of life and beauty with an underlying radicalism, whether in its early queerness or its later interrogation of technology and nature. He is survived by his partner Jean-Pierre Gonçalves de Lima and two brothers.