London.– The renowned British artist David Hockney, considered one of the most important and influential figures in contemporary art, passed away on Thursday at the age of 88 at his London residence, according to his publicist Erica Bolton, who did not provide details regarding the cause of death.
With a career spanning more than six decades, Hockney challenged the dominant currents of the art of his time by opting for figurative, narrative, and deeply personal painting at a time when abstraction and conceptualism set the tone in galleries and museums.
Born on July 9, 1937, in Bradford, Yorkshire, into a working-class family, Hockney demonstrated exceptional talent for drawing from an early age. After declaring himself a conscientious objector and performing alternative service in a hospital, he entered the Royal College of Art in London in 1959, where he began to build the style that would make him an international reference.
His work achieved great notoriety starting in the 1960s, especially after his travels to the United States and his subsequent settlement in Los Angeles. There, he found an inexhaustible source of inspiration in modern architecture, the Californian luminosity, and the Southern California lifestyle.
It was precisely in that city where he created some of his most iconic pieces, among them his famous swimming pool paintings, which became symbols of an era and a particular way of understanding the American dream.
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Among his most recognized works is “Portrait of an Artist (Pool With Two Figures)”, created in 1972, considered one of the most important works of 20th-century art and one of the most iconic images of his artistic production.
In addition to renewing the language of figurative painting, Hockney was one of the first artists of great international stature to openly incorporate themes linked to homosexuality into his work. In an era marked by censorship and prejudice, he publicly defended the representation of sexual diversity and contributed to expanding the boundaries of artistic expression.
Throughout his career, he also explored multiple disciplines and formats. He ventured into engraving, drawing, photography, set design for opera and ballet, and even adopted digital tools like the iPad to continue experimenting with new forms of creation.
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His passing occurred just nine months after the closing of a major retrospective dedicated to his legacy at the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris. Despite his deteriorating health and the fact that he used a wheelchair, he continued working from his London studio until the final months of his life.
“I’m just continuing with my work,” he declared in 2025 to The New York Times newspaper. “When I return from Paris, I’m going to keep painting.”
And so it was. Until the end, David Hockney remained faithful to the discipline that defined his existence: observing the world, reinterpreting it, and transforming it into images full of color, humanity, and sensitivity.
With his death, one of the last great masters of modern art disappears, but a legacy remains intact that inspired generations of artists and viewers around the world, demonstrating that innovation can also emerge from figuration, intimacy, and the beauty of everyday life.
