David Hockney’s Art Basel presence takes on new weight after his death
David Hockney’s work has long been a familiar sight at Art Basel. This year, though, the paintings and drawings on view across the fair arrive with a different charge: the British artist died on June 11, and the market is now absorbing the loss of one of its most widely collected figures.
At Annely Juda in London, the gallery most closely associated with Hockney since the 1990s, the standout offering is Delphiniums on My Garden Table, July 2025 (2025), a flower painting made after the artist’s birthday last year. David Juda, who knew Hockney from the 1960s and sat for him several times, said the work captures blooms given to the artist as a gift. The price: $12 million.
Elsewhere on the fair floor, Offer Waterman is focusing on Hockney’s secondary-market drawings from the 1960s and 1970s. Two works on paper are priced at upwards of £100,000, including a portrait of Mo McDermott, Hockney’s then assistant, and an image of Tim Macdonald on Fire Island, the New York enclave long associated with queer social life. The gallery is also holding a drawing of a naked man in California in its back room, underscoring the range of Hockney’s subject matter beyond the sunlit pools and domestic interiors for which he is best known.
Hockney appears at other booths as well, including Pace and Lelong. Richard Gray Gallery of Chicago said it has sold two Hockney works, among them an $8.5 million painting of his studio interior from 2014, to a US collection. Valerie Carberry, the gallery’s chief executive, recalled seeing Hockney at the opening of his Fondation Louis Vuitton retrospective in Paris in 2025, describing the joy on his face as he encountered what she called his greatest career achievement.
The fair’s timing makes any direct tribute unlikely. Art Basel stands are planned months ahead, and shipping remains costly and complicated. Still, the market reaction has been immediate. MyArtBroker said collector demand for Hockney editions rose more than 1,200% within 48 hours of his death, based on activity across its private sales platform. Charlotte Stewart, the company’s managing director, said the scale and speed of the response were exceptional, adding that Hockney never became a historical figure while alive because he remained active, experimental, and capable of surprising collectors. In that sense, his market was still expanding when he died — a rare position for an artist of his stature.
