David Hockney at his exhibition “David Hockney: Bigger & Closer (not smaller and further away),” 2023. Photo by Justin Sutcliffe.
Table of Contents
- Who is David Hockney: life and training in Bradford and Los Angeles.
- California's swimming pools: the series that made him universal
- Hockney and photography: joiners and multi-perspective.
- Hockney digital: painting with iPad and new media
- David Hockney's graphic work: the portrait as an intimate space
- David Hockney in the art market: records and legacy
What you will learn in this article
- How David Hockney's career developed between his training in Bradford and his time in California.
- What characterizes his pool paintings and how he used photography and joiners to bring together different points of view.
- How he incorporated the iPad into his practice, what place graphic work held in his production and what his presence in the art market has been.
By the end of this article: you will be able to identify some of David Hockney's main works, techniques and periods, from his Californian pools to his photographs, lithographs and digital drawings.
Reading time: 6 minutes | Level: introductory | For: art lovers and people interested in starting or expanding a collection
Who Is David Hockney: Life and Training in Bradford and Los Angeles
A blue swimming pool, a house with geometric lines and a splash suspended in the air are enough to recognize the universe of David Hockney (1937-2026). However, his career began far from the California sun, in the industrial English city of Bradford.
David Hockney studied at the Bradford School of Art between 1953 and 1957 and continued his training at the Royal College of Art in London between 1959 and 1962. During those years, he began to stand out within a generation of artists linked to the development of British pop art.
His work soon acquired a personal language, recognizable by his use of color and by themes such as portraiture, interiors, landscape, and scenes from daily life. Throughout his career, he has worked with painting, printmaking, photography, video, and digital media, incorporating each technique into his artistic research.
When he first traveled to Los Angeles in 1964, he found a visual landscape very different from that of his hometown. The intense light of California, modern architecture, and the swimming pools of Angeleno homes became central to some of his most famous works. In those water surfaces, he also found a pictorial challenge: to represent transparency, reflections, and movement that changes every instant.
California's Swimming Pools: The Series That Made Him Universal
David Hockney, A Bigger Splash, 1967. Acrylic paint on canvas, 242.5 × 243.9 cm. Tate Collection, London
Among David Hockney's works of art, few images are as recognizable as the swimming pools he painted during his Californian period. The Little Splash, The Splash, and A Bigger Splash present variations on the same motif: a Californian swimming pool and a splash suggesting the presence of someone who has just jumped into the water and disappeared beneath the surface.
The artist summarized the appeal of the scene with a revealing observation: "I loved the idea of painting something that lasts two seconds." As he explained, it took him about two weeks to depict that ephemeral moment. The painting stops the splash and allows contemplation of a form that, in everyday experience, disappears almost immediately.
In David Hockney's pools, references to abstract expressionism, minimalism, and pop art coexist, resolved in his own distinctive style. The gestural energy of the splash appears contained within an ordered composition, while the pool and modern architecture place the scene in the imaginary of 1960s California.
Hockney and Photography: Joiners and Multiple Perspectives
Billy and Audrey Wilder, Los Angeles, April 1982, 1982, composition of Polaroid photos, 116.84 × 111.76 cm.
David Hockney had been using photographs since the 1970s, mainly as support for preparing his paintings. However, he was skeptical that a single image could truly reproduce our visual experience: we move our heads, change our point of attention, and need time to observe. In the early 1980s, while using a Polaroid camera to document his personal archive, he discovered a new artistic possibility: bringing together instant photographs taken from different viewpoints within the same composition. These pieces were called joiners.
Instead of offering a single, stable view, joiners bring together different angles and moments. A chair can be seen from several positions; a face changes slightly between one photograph and the next; space seems to open up as the eyes scan the composition.
Hockney related this process to Cubism for its ability to bring together different perspectives and reduce a scene to its essential elements. As he explained, joiners came close to the way we actually look and our experience of visually traversing a space.
Digital Hockney: Painting with the iPad and New Media
David Hockney, 22nd April 2020, No. 2, iPad Drawing
The technical curiosity of artist David Hockney continued after his experiments with photography. In 2008, he began to try out art creation programs on his iPhone, and when the iPad appeared in 2010, he found a tool with a larger screen and greater drawing possibilities. Lightweight and easy to transport, the device allowed him to carry a kind of digital sketchbook and work with various textures, finishes, and visual effects.
The transition to the screen maintained the link with his previous work. The digital drawings retained the intense color, clarity of forms, and other features present in his paintings and works on paper. At the same time, the experience with the iPad left its mark on some later physical works, in which a more graphic treatment of the image is appreciated.
Hockney understood digital and traditional techniques as complementary practices, capable of influencing each other. The relationship between David Hockney and the iPad is part of a trajectory marked by experimentation with different media: from pencil and acrylic paint to photography, fax, video, and digital devices. Each tool offered him new ways of constructing an image without breaking the continuity of his artistic language.
David Hockney’s Graphic Work: Portraiture as an Intimate Space
David Hockney, Yves Marie, 1974. Hand-signed and numbered lithograph, 56 × 76 cm. Edition of 75 copies + 16 artist proofs. Available in our Art Shop
Graphic work accompanied David Hockney from his student years at the Royal College of Art and maintained a constant place in his production. Throughout his career, he worked with techniques such as etching, lithography, and screen printing, which allowed him to explore portraiture, narration, and the expressive possibilities of line. This facet of his career demonstrates the appeal of limited editions on paper for collectors, provided that one understands how to collect art prints safely and strategically.
Created in 1974 during his Parisian period, Yves Marie is a signed and numbered lithograph, portraying Yves-Marie Hervé, a friend of the artist and one of his muses during that period. Discover this work by David Hockney in our online store and see all the details of the edition.
David Hockney in the Art Market: Records and Legacy
David Hockney, Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), 1972. Acrylic on canvas, 213.4 × 304.8 cm. Private collection.
In November 2018, Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) sold at Christie’s for $90,312,500, becoming, at that time, the most expensive work by a living artist sold at auction. These types of historic transactions often lead investors to wonder if auction houses are truly in crisis or if they are simply reconfiguring their dynamics for new generations of buyers.
After his passing on June 11, 2026, David Hockney left a legacy built over more than six decades of creation. His work, which spans painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, stage design, and digital media, reveals an inexhaustible curiosity for the different ways of representing the world. From traditional techniques and joiners to his iPhone and iPad drawings, Hockney incorporated each new tool without abandoning a deeply personal vision. The intensity of color, his prolonged dedication to portraiture and landscape, and his constant investigation of space and perspective provide continuity to a trajectory marked, above all, by the desire to renew our way of seeing.
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