David Hockney is one of the most important painters of the 20th century. If you were to Google, famous British painters, there’s a good chance that Hockney’s name will appear. Born in Bradford in 1937, Hockney was one of the big artists involved in the pop art movement in the 1960s. Pop art was a style of art that was bright, full of colour. It was made by lots of young artists who felt that the art they saw in galleries was a little bit boring.
Born with synaesthesia, Hockney sees colours in response to musical stimuli. Although he has never translated this into his painting or photography, it is a common underlying principle in his designs for ballet and opera stage sets – where he bases background colours and lighting on the colours he sees while listening to each musical score.
A visit to California – where he was to live for many years – inspired Hockney to make his iconic series of paintings of swimming pools in the comparatively new medium of acryclic. “I always loved swimming pools, all the wiggly lines they make,” the artist told CNN in 2017. “If you photograph them, it freezes them whereas if you use paint, you can have wiggly lines that wiggle.”
Taking numerous Polaroid or 35mm photographs of a scene from a variety of perspectives, Hockney would then arrange the collection of images into a cohesive body, creating an almost Cubist rendering of visual reality. He called these collages and photo montages joiners.
