Elegant and ominous, “Portrait of an Artist (Pool With Two Figures),” from 1972, was one of Mr. Hockney’s celebrated images of swimming pools.Credit...David Hockney, via Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Widely regarded as one of the most influential artists of the postwar era, Hockney transformed everyday scenes into vivid celebrations of color, light, and perception. Although he was born in Bradford, England, and maintained strong ties to his native country throughout his life, it was Los Angeles that became both his adopted home and his most enduring artistic muse.
Hockney arrived in California in 1964 after seeing photographs of the city while still living in London. Drawn by its bright climate, modern architecture, and relaxed social atmosphere, he quickly found inspiration in a landscape unlike anything he had known in Britain. The city would become central to his work for more than five decades.
His paintings of Los Angeles swimming pools rank among the most iconic images in contemporary art. Works such as A Bigger Splash distilled the city into a series of clean geometric forms, shimmering water, and brilliant skies. The painting’s depiction of a diver’s vanished body, represented only by an explosive burst of water, became one of the defining images of twentieth-century art.
Other celebrated California works, including Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) and Mulholland Drive: The Road to the Studio, captured the city’s peculiar blend of glamour, isolation, and natural beauty. Through Hockney’s eyes, Los Angeles emerged not as a cultural backwater, as many East Coast critics had once considered it, but as a center of artistic innovation and visual possibility.
His influence extended beyond painting. Hockney was an accomplished draftsman, printmaker, photographer, stage designer, and digital artist. He embraced new technologies throughout his career, experimenting with photocollages in the 1980s and later creating works on iPhones and iPads long before digital art gained widespread acceptance.
Yet Los Angeles remained a constant presence. From his home in the Hollywood Hills, he painted the city’s canyons, roads, and gardens, chronicling a landscape that changed dramatically over the decades. His depictions of Southern California architecture helped elevate modernist homes and swimming pools into symbols of a distinctive American lifestyle.
Friends and colleagues often remarked on Hockney’s enthusiasm and curiosity. He approached art-making with an infectious sense of wonder, insisting that seeing was an active process rather than a passive one. “The world is very beautiful if you look at it,” he often said, a philosophy reflected in thousands of works spanning more than six decades.
Hockney’s impact on Los Angeles was profound. His paintings helped shape how the city saw itself and how it was perceived around the world. Long before Hollywood’s contemporary art boom and the emergence of Los Angeles as a rival to New York in the art market, Hockney demonstrated that Southern California possessed a visual culture worthy of serious artistic attention.
Major retrospectives of his work drew record crowds in Europe, Asia, and the United States. His paintings became fixtures of leading museums, including Tate Britain, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In 2018, Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) briefly became the most expensive work by a living artist ever sold at auction.
David Hockney leaves behind a body of work that permanently altered the visual language of contemporary art. More than any other artist, he captured the dreamlike allure of Los Angeles—the sparkling pools, winding roads, and endless sunlight—and transformed them into images that will endure long after the city itself has changed. Through his art, Los Angeles became not merely a place but an idea: radiant, seductive, and endlessly observed.
