David Hockney, the legendary British artist behind some of the most recognizable works of contemporary painting, such as The Splash and Pool with Two Figures, has died. He was 88.
News of Hockney’s death was first reported in the French press and was later confirmed by his publicist in a statement to the BBC and London’s Evening Standard.
The statement read: “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.”
Born in Yorkshire, England, Hockney studied at the Bradford College of Art and the Royal College of Art, where he worked alongside artists such as Frank Bowling and R. B. Kitaj, and graduated with a Gold Medal and emerged as one of the seminal talents in a new generation of British artists.
In 1964, he moved from London to Los Angeles, where he began to document Southern Californian life, first with his seductive swimming pool series, which would later become some of his most recognizable work. In 2018, Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), one of the works Hockney painted during this era, sold at Christie’s in New York City for $90 million (£70 million), becoming the most expensive artwork by a living artist sold at auction. The sale broke the previous record, which was set by the 2013 sale of Jeff Koons’s Balloon Dog (Orange) for $58.4 million. Hockney held the record until 2019 when Koons reclaimed the honour by selling his Rabbit for more than $91 million at Christie’s in New York.
Discussing the sale at the time, Hockney simply said in a statement to the BBC: “Paint the things you love.”
Hockney quickly began contributing work in various other mediums, including opera, theatre, film, and photography. This interdisciplinary mix would shape the rest of Hockney’s career, which spanned decades and touched virtually every artistic discipline.
The artist relocated back to London in 2023 after years living in the United States and France, and he was the subject of several large-scale retrospectives. He recently received France’s Légion d’Honneur as an Officier, and next year Tate Britain will host a comprehensive survey of his work.
