Key facts about David Hockney
David Hockney was born in Bradford, West Yorkshire in 1937.
Hockney is one of the most famous British artists alive today. He has been making art in different materials for over 60 years.
Painted in 1967, A Bigger Splash is Hockney's best-known artwork. It shows a sunny day and a swimming pool in Los Angeles, in the USA.
Hockney has used paint, Art made by gluing materials to a surface., A type of collaging where printed images and text are cut up and rearranged to make a new image. and many more techniques and materials in his work.
He has also used phones and tablets to create digital artworks.
Although his art uses many different styles and materials, it is usually about people and places.
Watch: Who is David Hockney?
Learn more about the life and work of David Hockney
Narrator: David Hockney was born in 1937 in Bradford, West Yorkshire.
David studied at the Bradford School of Art then the Royal College of Art in London, which he loved.
Hockney was excited by lots of different types of art such as sketching, painting and photography.
He used lots of bold colours and was involved in the pop art movement in the 1960s.
He drew his family and friends and painted landscapes of places he had visited.
Hockney found inspiration for his art everywhere.
In the 1980s he made photo collages.
These are large images pieced together from smaller images, like looking through a kaleidoscope.
David continues to embrace modern technology, using phones and tablets to create digital artworks.
David Hockney is one of the most influential and experimental artists of his time.
David Hockney factfile
Did you know?
- Hockney used a photograph taken by somebody else as the inspiration for his painting and the splash details.
- Hockney loves swimming pools and he made more than one painting of them. A Bigger Splash is the most well-known.
- It would be very difficult to capture a splash like this with a camera. The moment is over so fast and the splash would cause ripples over the rest of the water.
- Hockney spent two weeks just painting the splash section of the artwork with a small brush.
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