British artist David Hockney dies aged 88

British artist David Hockney, an influential and defining figure in contemporary art, has died aged 88, his public relations agent has announced.

Describing Hockney as "one of the most important figures in contemporary art in both the 20th and 21st centuries," his publicist Erica Bolton said in a statement that he had "passed away peacefully at home" in London yesterday.

"David Hockney's enduring legacy reflects his underlying enthusiasm for life, his outstanding sense of humour, his immense generosity, and his investigative curiosity encapsulated by his signature phrase, Love Life," she added.

As a pioneer of the British Pop Art movement in the early 60s, Hockney gained recognition for his semi-abstract painting on the theme of homosexual love before it was decriminalised in England in 1967.

After moving to California at the end of 1963, he began painting scenes of the life of athletic young men, depicting swimming pools, palm trees, and the sun. One of his pop-art paintings from that era, Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), inspired a painting seen in the title character's home in the animated adult television series BoJack Horseman. In 2018, the painting sold for $90.3 million in New York, setting a new auction record for a living artist.

Throughout the 1990s, Hockney frequently returned to his native Yorkshire to visit his mother before her death. His visits became longer, and he began painting the Yorkshire countryside, re-inventing himself as a landscape artist.

A keen adopter of technologies like the Polaroid and video camera throughout his career, Hockney embraced the Apple iPad in his 70s. Massive prints of the works created on the tablet featured in his 2012 exhibition, A Bigger Picture.

Into his late 80s, he still worked actively within the art world.

His most recent major project is the 2026 exhibition, David Hockney: A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts about Painting at the Serpentine North Gallery in London.

It features his 90-metre-long panoramic frieze A Year in Normandie, and a series of 10 new acrylic-on-canvas works, including five portraits of his close circle and five still lifes centred around a gingham tablecloth motif.

The exhibition runs from March 12 to August 23, 2026.