David Hockney, one of Britain's most celebrated and ceaselessly inventive painters, has died at the age of 88. Hockney, whose distinctive style and vibrant use of colour captured the imagination of millions, was perhaps best known for his iconic depictions of Californian swimming pools, a subject he explored with great depth and wit after moving to Los Angeles in the 1960s.
Hockney's initial encounter with California in 1963, on commission for a New York exhibition, left him captivated by the landscape. He famously marvelled at the blue glint of swimming pools from a Pan Am jet, believing the region needed its own artistic chronicler. His first Californian piece, Plastic Tree Plus City Hall, embraced the artificiality of Los Angeles, using plastic-based acrylic paint for the first time to achieve brighter colour saturations and a smooth, texture-free surface perfect for capturing the dappled light on water.
Returning to London, Hockney continued to develop this theme. Works such as Picture of a Hollywood Swimming Pool, created in his Notting Hill flat, laid the groundwork for a body of work that would define much of his public image. These paintings, which culminated in the widely recognised A Bigger Splash in 1967 – a large, square canvas mimicking a Polaroid snapshot – showcased his masterful interplay of surface and depth, drawing on influences from artists like Matisse and Cézanne.
Before his Californian period, Hockney's time at the Royal College of Art in 1959 was marked by a fervent artistic atmosphere, alongside contemporaries such as Peter Blake and Bridget Riley. It was here that he developed his 'Love Paintings', a series inspired by Walt Whitman's poems of gay love. Hockney, a conscientious objector like his father, also briefly explored 'vegetarian propaganda pictures' at the suggestion of American artist RB Kitaj, whom he greatly admired.
Hockney's mother, visiting him in California, famously observed the 'lovely drying weather' but questioned why 'no one's got their washing out', a testament to his working-class roots in Bradford and the cultural chasm between his upbringing and his adopted home. This anecdote, often recounted by Hockney, underscored a delightful detachment from the artistic world's complexities, much like Mrs. Warhol or Alan Bennett's 'Mam'. His legacy is one of boundless curiosity, technical innovation, and a profound ability to translate the essence of a place and its people onto canvas.