In the 1960s, the young English artist David Hockney moved to Hollywood, and like Aldous Huxley, another Englishman, found the landscape and the locals to be an endless source of fascination as well as a state of mind. His iconic images of California architecture and landscapes are included in "My Pool and Terrace."

Eight by Eight to Celebrate the Temporary Contemporary was a portfolio consisting of prints created by eight artists as a fundraising vehicle for MOCA. The artists who participated were Richard Diebenkorn, Sam Francis, David Hockney, Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Rauschenberg, Niki de Saint Phalle, Jean Tinguely, and Andy Warhol.

An important contributor to the Pop Art movement of the 1960s, David Hockney (b. 1937) is considered one of the most influential British artists of the twentieth century. Celebrated for his 1960s series featuring Los Angeles swimming pools and their denizens, Hockney paints in a bright and deliberately naïve style, drawing his subject matter from popular culture. A follower of artist Kitaj early in his career, Hockney’s first mature works were narratives, painted in an almost childlike manner with flat areas of space complementing fine lines and expressionist details. Moving to California inspired him to produce the simplified archaic forms in the bright California palette for which he is now best known. There was no better place than the California swimming pools set against the L.A. skyline for Hockney to explore the glossy surface of American popular culture. Later, Hockney turned to a more naturalistic manner of painting, creating numerous portraits of his popular contemporaries.

Hockney’s works have been featured in over five hundreds exhibitions worldwide, notably at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY (2009); the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, England (2009); and the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL (2008). David Hockney is currently based in California and the UK.

Selected Public Collections:
The Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY)
Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, MA)
Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles, CA)
The Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, CA)
Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, D.C.)