David Hockney (b. 1937) is a British artist whose work is some of the most iconic and influential art of the twentieth century. Hockney's incorporation of advertising aesthetics brought figurative painting back to life. Unlike his Pop Art peers, he incorporates many scenes to create a composite viewpoint in his work, which is heavily influenced by Cubism. He is also renowned for his depiction of the domestic sphere and ability to defy classification within a single category. Hockney studied at the Bradford College of Art and the Royal College of Art, London, where he received a gold metal in the graduate competition. Hockney later moved to California, where he became known for his prolific output as a figurative and landscape artist of the Southern California lifestyle. He has worked in a variety of media, including painting, drawing, collage, photography, and printmaking, and he has often embraced contemporary technologies such as fax machines, laser photocopiers, and other digital instruments from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Hockney’s art is held in prestigious public collections worldwide, including the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Portrait Gallery in London, The Tate Gallery in London, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, the Museum of Modern Art in Vienna, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. Hockney's accomplishments have also been recognized with numerous awards and honors. These include the First Annual Award of Achievement from the Archives of American Art in Los Angeles, membership on the Board of Trustees of the American Associates of the Royal Academy Trust in New York, and the title of Distinguished Honoree of the National Arts Association in Los Angeles. He has also received the Lorenzo de Medici Lifetime Career Award from the Florence Biennale and nine honorary degrees from institutions around the world. In 1997, Hockney was made a Companion of Honour by the British and Commonwealth Order for his exceptional contributions to the arts.