David Hockney was born on July 9, 1937 in Bradford, England. He studied at the Bradford School of Art from 1953 to 1957, where he received the National Diploma of Design. In 1959 he was accepted into the Royal College of Art in London, where he studied together with Ron B. Kitaj, Allan Jones and Patrick Caulfield.
Hockney travelled to America extensively and had his first solo exhibition at the André Emmerich Gallery in New York. In the spring of 1973 Hockney moved to Paris, where his main interest at the time was in drawing and etching. Numerous exhibitions followed, including the retrospective at the Musée des Arts Decoratifs in Paris.
Hockney created subtle drawings and masterly prints, in some cases combining varying printing techniques. He was also active in stage design and photography. Hockney's large body of graphic work, concentrating on etching and lithography, in itself assures him an important place in modern British art, and in series inspired by literary sources such as Illustrations for Fourteen Poems from C. P. Cavafy, Illustrations for Six Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm and The Blue Guitar, he did much to revive the tradition of the Livre d'Artiste.