Abstract
David Hockney is a painter, draughtsman, printmaker, photographer and designer. He can, perhaps, be considered as the most popular and versatile British artist of the 20th century. Mainly active in America, he is recognised as an important contributor to the British Pop Art of the 1960s. Born in Bradford, on 9 July 1937, he claims to have 'decided in my mind that I wanted to be an artist', by the age of eleven. The general lack of visual education in schools at that time pushed him to pursue his artistic training at the regional College of Arts in Bradford. Here, he received a very rigorous and academic education which covered mostly painting. He made an oil painting of his father, which he submitted to the Yorkshire Artists Exhibition in 1954. He went on to participate in other local exhibitions in Bradford and Leeds.
