Rago Auctions

David Hockney is considered one of the most influential artists of the 20th century and of the British pop art movement. A painter, printmaker, stage designer, and photographer, his unmistakable style breaks boundaries both in the rules of art and across multiple artistic movements. Born in 1937 in Bradford, England he studied at the Royal College of Art, but did not graduate on account of declining to submit an essay along with his final work. In the 1960s, his bright, figurative paintings of Los Angeles swimming pools accompanied by Californian landscapes as wells as personal subject matter including portraits of friends ignited his career. In 1963, at the age of 26, he had his first one-man show and in 1970 the White Chapel Gallery exhibited his first retrospective.

In the early 1980s, he began working in photocollage, or “joiners” as he called them, exploring movement and photography. In a recent 2016 exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia, Hockney debuted a series of works created on the iPhone and iPad exhibiting his love for technology.

Hockney is a highly celebrated artist receiving the First Annual Award of Achievement from the Archives of American Art, Los Angeles in 1993, the Lorenzo de’ Medici Lifetime Career Award of the Florence Biennale, Italy in 2003, and appointment to the Order of Merit by Queen Elizabeth II in 2012 among many others. His work is also held amongst some of the most distinguished collections around the world including the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Art Institute of Chicago, Tate Gallery London, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C., Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. David Hockney lives and works in the Hollywood Hills, California.