David Hockney dies, the most iconic British artist of the 20th century

BarcelonaTrue to his essence until the end: just over a month ago, the British artist David Hockney, who died this Friday at the age of 88, received the actor Ian McKellen in his studio, as McKellen himself published on his Instagram. Although Hockney had been using a wheelchair for some years, and in the photo he looks quite thin, he maintained his style, with a suit with colored checks and his characteristic horn-rimmed glasses. Hockney dressed as he painted. Furthermore, seeing Hockney and McKellen together implies seeing reunited two of the most important figures in 20th-century British culture, and two unquenchable icons of the gay community, who began working when homosexuality was still a crime in the United Kingdom.

Secret knowledge: rediscovering the lost techniques of the old mastersSecret knowledge: rediscovering the lost techniques of the old masters (published in Spanish by Destino), in which he revealed that great masters like Caravaggio, Velázquez, Van Eyck, Holbein, Leonardo, and Ingres used optical devices to create their works, and that they had wanted to keep these techniques secret.

Hockney also drew with the iPad since the device appeared, and among his most recent achievements are the drawings he sent to his friends every day during the covid pandemic from his studio in Normandy with the slogan "They can stop everything, but they can't stop spring." Hockney was successful from very early on and did not stop receiving recognition, but it is even more special that he died after having been able to follow the great exhibition, the most ambitious of his career, dedicated to him by the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris last year. And the exhibition dedicated to him by the Serpentine Gallery in London is still open, where the approximately 90-meter frieze "A Year in Normandy", inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry, can be seen for the first time in the city.

Furthermore, Hockney's death has sparked a wave of reactions in the world of British politics and culture. For the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, he was "a true icon and a revolutionary of British art who never stopped reinventing his work." The Minister of Culture, Lisa Nandy, defines him as "a true titan of British art." But, according to the obituary published in "The Guardian", it is believed that Hockney repeatedly refused to be called a knight and that on one occasion he declined an invitation to paint a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II. However, King Charles remembered him as "a giant of the art and painting world, a Yorkshireman through and through, and a beloved friend."

"David was an artist of inexhaustible inventiveness, with a unique worldview," published the director of the Tate Britain, Alex Farquharson, on Instagram. This museum hosted a major exhibition of Hockney's work in 2017. "He was always entirely himself, with absolute courage, both in his work and in life – adds Farquharson–. He taught us the joy of looking, of seeing what the rest of us did not know how to perceive; his witty and incisive observations were a constant presence both in his work and in person. The loss to the art world is immense: David's death brings an end to an extraordinary career, characterized by reinvention."

The most emblematic works

A pool and a large splash tell us that someone has just jumped in. This image corresponds to A Bigger Splash, one of Hockney's most famous paintings. From the same period is Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), which in 2018 was sold for 80 million euros at auction, making Hockney the most valuable living artist. It is an evocation of his breakup with fellow artist Peter Schlesinger. Another of his best-known portraits is My Parents, where Kenneth and Laura Hockney can be seen lost in thought. And so is Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy, a portrait of fashion designer Ossie Clark and his wife, Celia Birtwell, both friends of his.

The son of an administrator and a devout Methodist mother, Hockney began his art studies in his hometown of Bradford, in northern England, but soon rebelled against conventions, with gestures such as giving his abstract paintings titles like "Tonight I'm Going to Be a Queen" and "Toy Boy", at a time when homosexuality was punished with prison. The first work he sold, for 10 pounds, was a portrait of his father, and before moving to London to continue his studies at the Royal College of Art in 1959, he completed his military service as a conscientious objector, working as a porter in a hospital for two years.

In London, Hockney achieved meteoric success within the British pop art movement and associated with figures such as the dancer Rudolf Nureyev and the singer Mick Jagger. But Hockney longed for the excitement he saw in the work of American artists, and with the money obtained from the sale of his works, he traveled to New York for the first time in 1961 – where he befriended Andy Warhol – and three years later settled in California. "I thought that the people who produced such work had to live in color, so I went to look for it," Hockney said in an interview with art critic and friend Peter Adam. "I had spent the first twenty years of my life in the gothic darkness of the north. Here I felt free."

His images of swimming pools and naked men in showers became icons of a sun-drenched lifestyle that he documented with luminous acrylic paint before dividing his time between Los Angeles, London and Paris in the late 60s and throughout the 70s. But, despite his success, Hockney had an unpretentious attitude. "I'm still a student, really," he told Adam. "It's just that I've got quite a few credit cards in my pocket." In 1985, when he was invited to the White House for dinner with US President Ronald Reagan, Prince Charles and Princess Diana, security guards held him up for half an hour because he was the only guest to have arrived on foot, according to his biographer.

The return to England

With the passage of years and a more domestic life, dogs replaced men in his work, at a time when many of his friends were dying of AIDS. He explained that he had cried for two days when Stanley, one of his beloved dachshunds, died in 2001, after having portrayed him in numerous paintings and drawings. In the late nineties, Hockney began to return more often to Yorkshire, in northern England, where he had grown up, to visit his mother, and a friend with a terminal illness encouraged him to paint the local landscapes.

He felt increasingly alone, and decided to move from California to the coastal town of Bridlington, on the North Sea coast. For a decade he painted groups of bare trees in winter, fields full of ripe crops, and paths stretching towards the gentle rolling hills of Yorkshire. It was the most productive period of his entire career, in a race to capture scenes that, he said, changed more drastically with the seasons than in California. "This is not retirement work," he told the BBC with his strong Yorkshire accent when asked about his inexhaustible energy: "You just do it until you drop." As a result of his Yorkshire paintings, there is a stained-glass window for Westminster Abbey, also made with the iPad.

In 2018 Hockney bought a country house in Normandy, northern France, and turned his gaze to the fields and flowers in his garden. Hockney's work ethic – forged in the era when he got up every day at six in the morning to work in hospitals for two years, when he refused to do military service – hardly diminished in his later years. "I tend to think you have to work every day – he said –. And so I do."

Precisely painting saved him from a very difficult ordeal: in 2013 his 23-year-old assistant, Dominic Elliott, was found dead at his home in Bridlington. A coroner ruled that Elliott had died accidentally after taking various drugs and a drain cleaner. Hockney considered giving up art, because following Elliott's death he was unable to draw. But he managed and ended up creating a collection of more than 80 portraits of family members and collaborators, each in a maximum of three days, which could be seen at the Royal Academy of Arts in London and at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.