Artist David Hockney dies aged 88

Sam Woodhouse
BBC News

Image source, Getty Images

David Hockney, who has died aged 88, was Britain’s favourite artist – and a man of trenchant views, expressed in the broadest of Yorkshire vowels.

A genius in practically every medium, he worked with paint, photographs and iPads. He did etchings, lithographs, even stained glass windows – equally at home working with the grandeur of opera design and the intimacy of pen and ink.

A peroxide Bradford blond with round glasses and cheese-cutter hat, he set the art world alight in the 1960s, and packed out art galleries more than half a century later.

In 2018, one of his swimming pool paintings sold for nearly £70 million at auction – a record for a living artist. But Hockney was surprised at the public enthusiasm for his work.

He had simply followed one rule: “Paint the things you love”.