Hockney, David

(born July 9, 1937, Bradford, Eng.) British painter, draftsman, printmaker, photographer, and stage designer. He studied at the Bradford College of Art and the Royal College of Art in London. In the mid 1960s he taught at the Universities of Iowa, Colorado, and California, and in 1978 he settled permanently in Los Angeles. His portraits, self-portraits, still lifes, and quiet scenes of friends are characterized by economy of technique, preoccupation with light, bright colours, and a frank, mundane realism derived from Pop art and photography. The California swimming pool became one of his favourite themes. A brilliant draftsman and printmaker, he published series of etchings, including illustrations for Six Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm (1969). In the 1970s he achieved prominence as a set designer for the opera and ballet. He later experimented with photography and photocollage, and still later with computer technology and printers.

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