David Hockney, famous UK painter and leader of the Pop art movement, dies aged 88

British artist David Hockney, considered one of the most influential and defining figures in modern art, whose paintings captured the world in vivid colors, has died at the age of 88, his spokesman announced on Friday.

Describing Hockney as “one of the most important figures in contemporary art of the 20th and 21st centuries,” public relations firm Bolton & Quinn confirmed to CBS News in a statement that he “died peacefully at home” in London on Thursday. He would have celebrated his 89th birthday next month.

“His seventeen-year career and progressive development have been reflected in his multi-media approach to image making, intellectual inquiry into the nature of photography and perspective, and an ongoing commitment to celebrating and portraying the world around him,” the agency said in a statement.

It noted that Hockney is survived by his longtime partner and colleague Jean-Pierre Goncalves de Lima, two brothers and “many nieces, nephews, nephews, and nieces.”

One of the leading artists involved in the Pop art movement of the 1960s, Hockney was recognized worldwide as a master painter and draftsman and continued to paint, explore and exhibit his acclaimed work until his death.

London’s Serpentine Gallery is currently holding its first exhibition there, created in close collaboration with the artist and featuring new paintings by him.

Future exhibitions at the Tate, London, and the Munch Museum in Oslo were being developed.

Hockney was admired around the world, Britain awarded him the Order of the Companions of Honor in 1997, and in 2026, he became one of the few non-French citizens to be awarded the rank of officer in France’s prestigious Legion d’Honneur.

Born in 1937 in West Yorkshire, northern England, Hockney trained at the Bradford School of Art in his hometown and then went to the Royal College of London, where he graduated with a Gold Medal.

He would soon emerge as one of the leading talents of a new generation of British musicians, taking everything from 1960s California – where he moved in 1964 – to the bucolic countryside of his native Yorkshire.

In 2018, his iconic swimming pool portrait, “Artist Portrait (Pool with Two Figures)” sold for $90.3 million in New Yorksetting a new auction record for a living artist. Jeff Koons’ “Rabbit” is being taken down a year later.

Hockney always kept his Yorkshire burr and was a lifelong devotee and heavy smoker, praising the joy it brought him to life, his publicist said in a statement.

“He smoked until the end,” it said.