DAVID HOCKNEY : ILLUSTRATED CHRONOLOGY
As a conscientious objector, for his National Service he works as a hospital orderly.
1959
Begins his studies at the Royal College of Art, London, where he meets R.B. Kitaj, Derek Boshier, Allen Jones, Peter Phillips and Patrick Caulfield. His tutors include Roger de Grey, Ceri Richards, Ruskin Spear and Carel Weight. Among the visiting artists are Francis Bacon, Richard Hamilton, Joe Tilson, Peter Blake and
Richard Smith.
Peter C, 1961
1960–61
Sees major Picasso exhibition at Tate Gallery, London. Takes part in the Young Contemporaries exhibition at the RBA Galleries and wins Junior Section Prize in the John Moores Liverpool Exhibition 1961, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. Meets the art dealer John Kasmin and Mo McDermott, who becomes his model. Reads Walt Whitman and paints Doll Boy, Adhesiveness, and other love paintings. On his first trip to New York in 1961, he meets William S. Lieberman, then Curator of Prints at the Museum of Modern Art, who buys two Hockney prints. Begins sixteen etchings for A Rake’s Progress.
David Hockney and Derek Boshier in the Royal College of Art Painting School, 1961
Myself and My Heroes, 1961
1962
Exhibits four Demonstrations of Versatility at the Young Contemporaries. Becomes friends with designer Ossie Clark. Visits Florence, Rome and Berlin with Jeff Goodman. Graduates from the Royal College of Art with a gold medal. Moves into Powis Terrace in the Notting Hill district of London. Paints The First Marriage.
Life Painting for Myself, 1962.
Domestic Scene, Notting Hill, 1963
1963
Paints The Second Marriage and Play within a Play. Begins a series of double-figure domestic scene paintings and shower paintings. His first solo exhibition, David Hockney: Pictures with People In takes place at John Kasmin’s gallery and is a sell out. Hockney begins to lead a very social and public life. His name is often mentioned in the press. Commissioned by the Sunday Times to make some drawings of Egypt, he travels there in October and produces forty coloured crayon drawings. Wins the graphic prize at the 3rd Paris Biennale. In December he goes to New York and meets Andy Warhol, Dennis Hopper and Henry Geldzahler, Curator of Twentieth-Century Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Shell Garage, Luxor, 1963