David Hockney — a Bradford boy we’re proud to call our own
Today would have been David Hockney’s 89th birthday. Born in Bradford on 9 July 1937, he went on to become one of the most influential British artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. He died just last month, on 11 June 2026, one month short of turning 89.
Here in Yorkshire, we’re marking the day the only way that feels right: by celebrating the work, the man, and the place that made him.
At Screen Yorkshire, we’re proud to have played a small part in bringing his story to the screen. Through the Yorkshire Content Fund, we co-invested in Randall Wright’s acclaimed feature documentary Hockney, a film that gave audiences an extraordinary window into the artist’s life and thinking, drawing on his personal archive of photographs and films to create what Wright described as “a frank and unparalleled visual diary of his long life.”
The film traces Hockney’s journey from working-class Bradford — where a love of pictures first took hold through a childhood spent at the cinema — through his years in Hollywood, and back again to the Yorkshire landscapes he never truly left behind. Hockney explored identity and intimacy throughout his career with a directness that was quietly revolutionary.
Whether painting the Grand Canyon or the rolling fields of his native Yorkshire, Hockney had a distinctive style and restless curiosity that endured for over seven decades. He worked until the very end, keeping painting, experimenting, and exhibiting right up until his death.
He was, in the truest sense, a Yorkshire original.
Find out more about the YCF supported Hockney here: https://www.screenyorkshire.co.uk/funding/productions/hockney/