Celebrated artist David Hockney dies aged 88

Legendary British artist David Hockney has died at the age of 88.

Over the course of more than seven decades, the Yorkshire-born artist was considered to be one of the most influential and defining figures in contemporary art.

His publicist Erica Bolton confirmed that he had ‘passed away peacefully’ at his home in London on Thursday.

A statement said: ‘The celebrated British artist David Hockney, one of the most important figures in contemporary art in both the 20th and 21st centuries, passed away peacefully at home on 11 June 2026, one month short of his 89th birthday.’

In 2018, his painting Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) was sold at auction in New York for 90 million dollars (£70 million), which smashed the then record for a work by a living artist.

Long seen as a ‘national treasure’, his huge round spectacles and bleached blond hair – replaced in later years by a series of flat caps – was almost as distinctive and familiar as his paintings.

As well as drawing on art from the past, from the Renaissanceto the abstract expressionism of Jackson Pollock, he was also known for consistently pursuing his own path and refusing to conform to the artistic fashions of the day.

An art school rebel, he was initially denied a diploma because he refused to complete an essay assignment and insisted that he should be judged on his artwork alone.

At the start of his career he then bucked the trend of painting figuratively when the dominant strand was abstraction, and instead used bright colours with a primitivist style.

In later years when critics decried his embrace of landscape painting, he made clear that he ‘didn’t give a damn’.

Having grown up in Bradford, he was enthralled by the light and freedoms of 1960s California, making the state his main home for 40 years.

He also enthusiastically embraced the opportunity to explore his sexuality as an openly gay man at a time when homosexuality was still illegal in England.

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