Who is David Hockney?

David Hockney was born on July 9, 1937, in Bradford, England. A "natural born artist"- by the time he won a scholarship to Bradford Grammar School in 1948 (one of the best schools in the country) at the age of eleven, he had already decided that he wanted to be an artist.

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Self Portrait, 1955

. Portrait of Father, 1955

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He drew for the school magazine and produced posters for the school debating society as a substitute for homework. At sixteen he managed to persuade his parents to let him go to the local art school, and this was followed by two years of working in hospitals as an alternative to National Service, as he had registered as a conscientious objector. After this he went to the Royal College of Art in London to continue his studies, arriving there in 1959.

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Eccleshill, Near Bradford, 1957
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Dewsbury Road, 1957-58

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Hockney immediately felt at home at the Royal College. There were no steadfast rules or regulations. Not only did he find much success and pride in his work, but he also thrived in the many friendships he made there. Hockney was a serious student and dedicated much effort to painting. During his first term, he experimented with more abstract styles, but he felt unsatisfied with that work, and he still sought his own style. He was quite a self-motivated sort of person and began to feel a need for meaningful subject matter, and so Hockney began painting works about vegetarianism and poetry he liked reading. He was at this moment in a phase of rapid self-discovery on both artistic and personal levels, coming to terms with his own sexuality, and at the same time searching for a style.

Hockney's ebullient personality soon made him well known, even outside the Royal College, and he made his first major impact as a painter with the Young Contemporaries Exhibition of January 1961. This show marked the public emergence of a new Pop movement in Britain, with Hockney as one of its leaders.