David Hockney Dies at 88 After Setting $90.3 Million Auction Record
Updated
Updated · Forbes · Jun 12
David Hockney Dies at 88 After Setting $90.3 Million Auction Record
3 articles · Updated · Forbes · Jun 12
Summary
David Hockney, the English painter who helped define 1960s Pop Art, died at 88 after a seven-decade career that made him one of the market’s most valuable living artists.
In 2018, his “Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)” sold for $90.3 million at Christie’s New York, then the highest auction price for a living artist.
That market strength continued with “Henry Geldzahler and Christopher Scott” at $49.52 million in 2019, “Nichols Canyon” at $41.07 million in 2020 and “Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy” at $44.34 million last year.
Hockney’s Los Angeles pool scenes and portraits of gay men became defining works, reflecting the openly gay life he painted years before homosexuality was decriminalized in Britain.
Tributes from King Charles, Prime Minister Keir Starmer and other artists underscored his wider cultural reach, while Christie’s still lists three Hockney works priced at $20,000 to $200,000.