Born in Bradford, Yorkshire (1937), David Hockney studied at the Bradford School of Art (1953-57) and the Royal College of Art (1959-62).
David Hockney has been engaged with portraiture since his teenage years when he painted "Portrait of my Father" (1955), and his self-portraits and depictions of family, lovers and friends.His portraits, self-portraits, still lifes and scenes of friends are characterized by his concern with light, bright colours, and frankly realism derived from Pop Art and photography.
During his time at the Royal College, Hockney won a gold medal and the Guinness Award for Etching in 1961. He was awarded a prize in the Junior Section of the John Moores Liverpool Exhibition in 1961 and in the Graphics Section of the Paris Biennale in 1963. He exhibited as a Pop at the Kasmin Gallery in 1963. He was given a retrospective exhibition called “Paintings, Prints and Drawings 1960-1970” at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1970.
Between 1963-1967, he lived in Los Angeles. Due to the mild californian atmospheres (the light, the gardens, the pools, the Beverly Hills architecture and the beaches), he changed substantially his paintings, using acrylic paint instead of oil paint. In 1964 he painted his first California pictures, including his first pool work. In the same year Hockney was invited to make a print at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles, which spearheaded the printmaking explosion in the United States. At Tamarind, Hockney met Ken Tyler, a trainee printer destined to found two world-famous workshops: Gemini in Los Angeles and Tyler Graphics in New York. Hockney made several important portrait lithographs at Gemini in 1973.
In the 1970s, he achieved prominence as a set designer for the opera and ballet. He later experimented with photography and photocollage, and still later with computer technology and printers.He carried on with his work with book illustration based on the cavafy poems and the Brothers Grimm tales and fine portrait work.
Hockney has gained a reputation for his success in drawings, witty etchings, double portraits, inventive photo-collages, opera sets and for his paintings of Southern California.
Throughout his career, Hockney has explored and reveled in the variety of techniques and effects offered by printmaking processes. He has also studied the techniques used by Picasso and spent two years working with Picasso’s printer in Paris. Hockney has recently produced homemade prints on Canon and Kodak office copiers, transmitted huge murals to exhibitions by fax and made drawings on Computer Paintbox for the Television. Hockney continues to live and work in California using his immediate surroundings as subject matter for his work.
Sources:
Clarke, David (1996): Art & Place - Essays on Art From Hong Kong Perspective. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Hoffmann, Frank (1990): Arts & Entertainments fads, Volume 1990, Parte 2. New York: The Haworth Press, Inc.
Melia, Paul (1995): David Hockney. UK: Manchester University Press.
Osterwold, Tilman (2003): Pop Art. Köln: Taschen.
