Hockney graduated from the Royal College of Art as one of Britain's brightest young artists. Even before leaving college, his paintings had attracted widespread attention for combining wit, autobiographical storytelling and references to his own sexuality at a time when homosexuality remained illegal in Britain.

His refusal to conform became an early hallmark of his career. When he declined to complete an academic essay required for graduation, the Royal College ultimately awarded his diploma on the strength of his artistic achievement alone.

It marked the arrival of an artist who would consistently challenge convention throughout his life.

After moving to Los Angeles in 1964, Hockney discovered a completely different quality of light. Swimming pools, modernist architecture and endless Californian sunshine became the foundations of some of the most recognisable paintings of the twentieth century.

Works such as A Bigger Splash (1967) transformed an everyday swimming pool into an enduring icon of post-war art. Rather than embracing consumer culture like many of his Pop Art contemporaries, Hockney focused on observation, atmosphere and the psychology of place.

Today, these paintings remain among the defining images of modern art.

Portraiture became one of Hockney's greatest achievements. His double portraits—including Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy (1970–71) and Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) (1972)—combined meticulous observation with subtle emotional tension.

Rather than simply recording likenesses, Hockney explored relationships, distance and intimacy through carefully constructed interiors and landscapes.

These works are now regarded among the greatest figurative paintings of the twentieth century and remain central to Tate Britain's collection.

Never content to accept traditional perspective, Hockney turned to photography.

His celebrated "joiners" assembled hundreds of individual photographs into complex compositions that captured multiple viewpoints simultaneously. Works such as Pearblossom Hwy., 11–18th April 1986 questioned the single frozen viewpoint of the camera and instead reflected how human vision actually experiences space and time.

These experiments influenced generations of photographers and remain some of the most intellectually ambitious works of his career.

Alongside painting, Hockney became one of the most respected stage designers of his generation, creating productions for Glyndebourne, the Metropolitan Opera and the Royal Opera House.

Productions including The Magic Flute, Tristan und Isolde and The Rake's Progress demonstrated his extraordinary understanding of colour, perspective and theatrical space.

For Hockney, opera was another way of exploring how images could shape emotional experience.

After decades in California, Hockney returned to Yorkshire in the early 2000s, rediscovering the landscape of his childhood.

The resulting paintings were among the most ambitious of his career. Instead of nostalgic depictions of the countryside, they celebrated seasonal change, light and the immersive experience of looking.

His Yorkshire landscapes re-established landscape painting as a vital contemporary language.

At almost 12 metres wide and painted across 50 canvases, Bigger Trees Near Warter became the largest painting Hockney had ever produced.

Created outdoors over several weeks, it was an extraordinary technical achievement that demonstrated his continuing ambition at the age of seventy.

Hockney later donated the work to Tate, describing it as a painting he was especially proud of. It remains one of the museum's most celebrated contemporary acquisitions.

Few artists in their seventies embrace new technology with genuine enthusiasm. Hockney did exactly that.

Beginning with the iPhone before moving to the iPad, he created thousands of digital drawings that were exhibited in major museums around the world. Rather than treating technology as a novelty, he recognised it as simply another artistic tool.

His digital works demonstrated that innovation is driven not by medium, but by curiosity. They helped establish digital drawing as a serious form of fine art and inspired an entirely new generation of artists.

The Royal Academy's David Hockney: A Bigger Picture became one of the most successful exhibitions in British history.

Bringing together monumental Yorkshire landscapes, charcoal drawings and iPad works, the exhibition attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors and reaffirmed Hockney's place among Britain's greatest living artists.

It proved that, fifty years after first coming to prominence, he remained at the forefront of contemporary art.

In 2018, Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) sold for $90.3 million, briefly becoming the most expensive work ever sold at auction by a living artist.

While the record itself was remarkable, it symbolised something much greater: international recognition of Hockney's extraordinary contribution to modern art.

By then, he had already received the Companion of Honour, the Order of Merit, major retrospectives at Tate Britain, the Centre Pompidou and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and was widely regarded as one of the most influential artists of the post-war era.

His greatest legacy, however, lies not in auction prices or honours, but in his unwavering belief that art begins with simply learning to look more carefully.