David Hockney, radical British artist, dies aged 88

David Hockney, the bespectacled and besuited British artist whose work spanned landscapes from the turquoise swimming pools of Los Angeles to the emerald hills of his native Yorkshire, has died aged 88.

- ROISIN O'CONNOR

He passed away peacefully at home on Thursday, one month short of his 89th birthday, his representatives said in a statement.

Tributes have flooded in from those who knew him or simply admired his work. King Charles described the artist as ‐a giant of the world of art and painting, a Yorkshireman through and through, and a dear friend and inspiration to so many”, while the culture secretary Lisa Nandy called Hockney “a true titan of British art”.

Born in Bradford, Yorkshire, in 1937, Hockney was the fourth of five children by creative, politically radical parents: a devout Methodist, vegetarian mother, Laura, and father Kenneth, an accountant who was a conscientious objector during the Second World War. He spent childhood summers near the coast, arranging sheaves of corn into stooks, in fields that would become the subject of some of his most famous works.

From a young age, Hockney knew that he wanted to be an artist. Academically gifted, he failed his exams deliberately so that he wouldn’t have to drop art, and transferred to the Bradford School of Art, working from nine in the morning until nine at night.

While attending the Royal College of Art in London, where his fellow students included Patrick Caulfield and RB Kitaj, Hockney exhibited and sold work at important shows. He sold out his debut solo exhibition - David Hockney: Pictures with People In - at John Kasmin’s gallery in 1963, when he was 25.