The major retrospective that Tate Britain dedicated to David Hockney in 2017 –I had the enormous privilege of seeing it in a small group, without worrying about the huge crowds it caused– had something of a celebration and, at the same time, of an early farewell. It was an exhibition that not only reviewed six decades of work: it aimed and succeeded in teaching the ins and outs of an artist who had turned vitality into a form of resistance. Hockney, already on the verge of turning eighty, painted every day with the urgency of someone who knew that time is finite, but who still has things to say and/or who questioned himself and strove to try to say new things.

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