Born in Bradford in 1937, David Hockney displayed a precocious talent for drawing and at the young age of eleven received a scholarship to the prestigious Bradford Grammar School. Hockney was later accepted into the Royal College of Art in 1959: joining a generation of artists who would later become renowned as founding British Pop Art, including Peter Blake and Allen Jones.

In 1963, Hockney travelled to New York and then settled in Los Angeles, where he became fascinated by the underground scene. At this time he began to paint images of young tanned men and Malibu-style architecture in bright acrylics. He also began to work with photography and photocollage, and created works of composite Polaroids called 'joiners'.

In 2008, the artist donated his monumental work done on fifty individual canvasses Bigger Trees Near Water to the Tate. Most recently in 2009, a major exhibition of Hockney's work from the 1960s formed the inaugural show of Nottingham Contemporary, a new gallery dedicated to modern and contemporary art.