Place of birth: Bradford, England
David Hockney has always denied being a Pop artist but is included under this heading because this is how the public perceives him. The most highly publicized British artist since the Second World War, he occupies a position analogous to that which was once accorded to Augustus John - one irony of this being that for John's exuberant heterosexuality Hockney substitutes a publicly acknowledged homosexuality. Hockney duly tried his hand at abstraction, but found it too barren. He was at this moment in a phase of rapid self-discovery on both artistic and personal levels, coming to terms with his own sexuality, and at the same time searching for a style. His stylistic experimentation was fuelled by discussions with R.B. Kitaj, who was a student at the Royal College over the same period. Since figure-painting seemed 'anti-modern' Hockney began by including words in his paintings as a way of humanizing them, but these were soon joined by figures painted in a deliberately rough and rudimentary style which owed a great deal to Jean Dubuffet.
