David Hockney
PAPER POOL, 1980
ithograph in colors, on Arches Cover paper
10 1/2 x 9 in
26.7 x 22.9 cm
Special Proof
Available at VFA
Most artists, good artists, trust their intuition. I trust mine. Sometimes it leads you to make mistakes, but that hardly matters…There is no such thing as failure, you just learn from it and go on. That’s the way I see it. - David Hockney
David Hockney was one of the most beloved and prolific artists in history.
He suffered a stroke in 2012 that temporarily impaired his speech but did not effect his ability to paint and draw.
Hockney was born in Bradford, in the north of England in 1937, the fourth of five children. He studied at the Bradford School of Art and the Royal College of Art in London. Hockney discovered California in the early 1960s, taught at Berkeley and UCLA, traveled in the US and Europe and built his successful career on both continents. He has always painted friends, family and the world around him.
Hockney spent time in Normandy during the pandemic. In 2025, he lived in London, where he had access to medial care. His hearing was failing and he had to use a wheelchair to get around, but he still managed to get to Paris to help curate a retrospective of his work at the Louis Vuitton Foundation. He returned to London, after the retrospective was completed to his satisfaction, and continued to paint until his death on June 11, 2026, at the age of 88.
In 2011, a poll of British art students rated David Hockney as the most influential artist of all time.
David Hockney’s works are on view in an ongoing exhibit at Salts Mill in Saltaire, West Yorkshire, UK.
An older painter gave me some advice:”Figuration is obsolete and color is French.” I said to myself, “To you, baby.” Actually, I had no idea whether what I was doing was going to find an audience, but my instincts told me there was no other way for me.
- Alex Katz
Like David Hockney, Alex Katz (b.1927) ignored critics who ignored him for not becoming part of the Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art movements in mid-century America. Like Hockney, Katz painted the people and places close to him.
His bold, simplified portraits and landscapes have made him one of America’s most iconic and esteemed artists.
His retrospective at the Guggenheim and the National Medal of Arts in 2023 were both very well deserved, even though they came late in his career.
Katz was born in Brooklyn in 1927 and attended Cooper Union. His work has been shown in more than 250 solo exhibitions and nearly 500 group exhibitions internationally since 1951.
In 1966, the Colby College Museum of Art in Maine, dedicated a wing solely for the works of Alex Katz, where ongoing exhibitions of its in-depth collection of Katz’s paintings, cutouts, drawings, and prints are shown. His works can be found in over 100 public collections worldwide.
Alex Katz continues to live and work in his home studio in SoHo, the same artists’ building that he has lived and worked in since 1968.
References:
Ben Eastham. The Beverly Hills Housewife by James Cahill review – a trip inside Hockney’s world. The Guardian. August 14, 2026.
Holland Cotter. David Hockney, Who Restored the Human Form to Art, Dies at 88. The New York Times. June 12, 2026.
