<b>David Hockney</b>
(1962)

<i>After a trip to Florence, Rome, and Berlin with his friend Jeff Goodman, Hockney begins teaching at Maidstone School of Art in the autumn. 

“I taught for one year at Maidstone,” Hockney remembers, “then I gave it up because I would rather have been working on my own work. I didn’t mind teaching once I was there, but in the end I began to resent it.”

He sets himself up with a studio in his new home at Powis Terrace in  London’s Notting Hill district, where among the first works he completes is this one:</I>

https://www.thedavidhockneyfoundation.org/chronology/1962

The First Marriage (A Marriage of Styles I)
1962
Oil on canvas
182 x 214 cm
Tate, London

https://www.tate-images.com/t00596-The-First-Marriage-A-Marriage-of-Styles-I.html
https://www.thedavidhockneyfoundation.org/artwork/3587

The First Marriage is a large painting depicting a couple seen in profile. The man stands behind the woman who is seated, although there is no support beneath her. As in several of Hockney’s painting made in the early 1960s, much of the canvas has been left in its natural state so that most of the background is empty. To the left of the couple, a grey pointed gothic arch shape is painted over an abstract area of colours. Hockney has said that he added this ‘for its ecclesiastical connections with marriage’ (quoted in David Hockney: Seven Paintings, [p.3]

 David Hockney
(1961)

The next painting was completed towards the end of Hockney's second year at the Royal College of Art at a time when homosexuality was still illegal in England. The painting derives its imagery from a poem of the same title by the nineteenth-century American writer, Walt Whitman: two lines of the poem have been scribbled on the right-hand side to offer a commentary on the men's activities. The painting also references a newspaper clipping detailing a climbing accident ('Two Boys Cling to Cliff all Night'), which Hockney interpreted as an allusion to his idol, Cliff Richard.

https://artscouncilcollection.org.uk/artwork/we-two-boys-together-clinging

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Two_Boys_Together_Clinging

We Two Boys Together Clinging
1961
Oil on board
120 x 150 cm
Arts Council Collection, London
https://artscouncilcollection.org.uk/artwork/we-two-boys-together-clinging

David Hockney
(1955)
 

In 1953, Hockney enters Bradford School of Art, a small institution where the focus is on traditional drawing and figurative work. Over the next four years, he develops beyond drawing and studying to become a commercial artist, realising that painting is what most deeply engages him.

Self-portrait
1955
Oil on plywood
61 x 45,7 cm
The David Hockney Foundation
https://www.thedavidhockneyfoundation.org/chronology/1953

 

David Hockney
(9 July 1937 – 11 June 2026)
 

David Hockney was a British painter, stage designer and photographer. As an important contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most influential British artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. He was known for his vivid, stylised realism and championed figurative work, often in a bold style, during a period when abstract art predominated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hockney

Portrait of my father
1955
Oil on canvas
51 x 460 cm
Fund David Hockney, London
https://www.thedavidhockneyfoundation.org/chronology/1953

 Georgia O'Keeffe
(1887 - 1986)

Georgia Totto O'Keeffe was an American modernist painter and draftswoman whose career spanned seven decades and whose work remained largely independent of major art movements. Called the "Mother of American modernism", O'Keeffe gained international recognition for her paintings of natural forms, particularly flowers, hills and desert-inspired landscapes, which were often drawn from and related to places and environments in which she lived. Although she was a figure associated with interpretations regarding feminism, she did not want to be seen as a "woman artist", she wanted to be seen as an artist.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_O'Keeffe

Jimson Weed / White Flower No. 1
1932
Oil on canvas
134.5 x 113.5 cm
Crystal Bridges Museum, Bentonville, Arkansas, U.S.
https://crystalbridges.org/artworks/2014-35

 Juan Gris
(1887 - 1927)

José Victoriano González-Pérez better known as Juan Gris, was a Spanish painter born in Madrid who lived and worked in France for most of his active period. Closely connected to the innovative artistic genre Cubism, his works are among the movement's most distinctive. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Gris

The Breakfast
1914
Gouache, oil, and crayon on cut-and-pasted printed paper on canvas with oil and crayon
80.9 x 59.7 cm
MoMA
https://www.moma.org/collection/works/35572

Giorgio Morandi
(1890 - 1964)

Giorgio Morandi was an Italian painter and printmaker widely known for his subtly muted still-life paintings of ceramic vessels, flowers, and landscapes. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giorgio_Morandi

Natura Morta ‘Still life)
1916
Oil on canvas
82.5 x 57.5 cm
MoMA
https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79411?artist_id=4079&page=1&sov_referrer=artist