DAVID HOCKNEY Biography

One of the foremost painters, designers, and photographers of the 20th-century contemporary art scene in the United States and England, David Hockney was born in Bradford, Yorkshire, England. He experimented with numerous styles including that of Italian master, Peiro della Francesca, and Hockney became one of the most important portraitists of his era, renowned for depictions of family and people he met in his extensive travels.

He studied at Bradford College of Art in 1957 and in 1962 at the Royal College of Art. In the 1960s, much of his work was a homage to his heroes that included Picasso, Dubuffet, and Matisse combined with the influence of Abstract Expressionism. In the mid 1970s, he spent three years in Paris and then traveled to Los Angeles where he did a series of lithographs and also did his first opera design, which was for Stravinsky's "The Rake's Progress." In 1988, the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, awarded him an honorary doctorate.

One of his closest friends in New York City was curator and leading art commentator, Henry Gedzhaler, with whom he traveled extensively in the 1970s and 1980s. Hockney did numerous paintings, lithographs and drawings that included Gedzhaler.

He has had numerous one-man shows including at the Kasmin Gallery, 1963-1989; in New York at the Museum of Modern Art in 1964 and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1988; the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Holland in 1966; and the Tate Gallery in London in 1988. He has also been a stage set designer for the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.

Hockney has lectured at universities including the University of Iowa in 1964, the University of Colorado in 1965, the University of California in Los Angeles in 1966, and the University of California-Berkeley in 1967.

Source: http://www.askart.com