David Hockney was born in 1937 in Bradford, Great Britain.  He studied at the Bradford College of Art (1953-1957) and the Royal College of Art in London (1959-1962). His first solo exhibition took place in 1962 in London. In 1963, he moved to California.

From 1960, David Hockney mixes abstraction, figuration and Pop Art in his paintings; Francis Bacon and Pablo Picasso inspire him as well. He paints consumer products, characters, adds inscriptions to his paintings.
 
In 1963, his work becomes more autonomous and autobiographical. He paints self-portraits, portraits of his parents, friends, series of indoor scenes, boys in the shower, swimming pools, trips ... If a very thin layer of paint affixed in flat an impression close to photography, its refusal of realism appears in the acidulous treatment of color and in the "small specific details" of invention.

By the mid-1970s, David Hockney also regularly created stage sets. After his first hit, Ubu Roi, at the Royal Court Theater in London in 1966, he made other sets and costumes, including the Glyndebourne Opera Festival and the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

Since 1978, David Hockney has been renewing collage and engraving using new techniques: paper pulp (Paper Pools, 1978), photography (Polaroids composites, Photocollages, 1982), "fractal" lithographs, photocopies, faxed images. ..

Hockney's art is an "unusual mix of fantasies in construction and disturbing realities in fact" (Charles Harrison). He elaborates decorative canvases, falsely naive in a very finished technique. He is known for his series of turquoise blue pools in Berveley Hill, California and his intimate, collective portraits.

Unclassifiable artist, he is considered one of the important painters of the twentieth century and the most popular and versatile English artist of recent years. David Hockney lives and works in Hollywood.