Charles Darwent

David Hockney, who died aged 88 on 11 June 2026, is remembered as one of Britain’s best-known and most influential artists. The obituary traces his childhood in Bradford, education at the Royal College of Art, emergence as a leading painter of 1960s California, and celebrated works including A Bigger Splash, Peter Getting Out of Nick’s Pool and Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy. It also follows his experiments with photography, large-scale landscapes and iPad drawing, alongside his relationships, family losses and later homes in France and London. Despite criticism of some projects, his work attracted huge international audiences, record auction prices and major honours.

Tess Jaray, the Vienna-born British artist and teacher, has died aged 88. Her abstract paintings explored architectural and pictorial space through geometric lines, colour and repetition, while her public commissions extended this approach into buildings, floors and urban spaces. Influenced by Italian architecture, American abstraction and her experience as a Jewish refugee from Nazi-occupied Austria, she also embraced emerging technologies and supported younger artists. Jaray taught at Hornsey College of Art and led the Slade’s postgraduate course for more than 30 years, collaborated with W. G. Sebald, and received major recognition including honorary fellowship of the Royal Institute of British Architects and election to the Royal Academy. She is survived by her daughters Anna and Georgia and four grandchildren.

Georg Baselitz, the German painter and sculptor known for raw, expressive works and upside-down figures, has died aged 88. Raised amid the devastation and political division of postwar Germany, he rejected both East German artistic censorship and the dominance of American abstraction, helping revive a confrontational German expressionism. His provocative works, including Big Night Down the Drain and Model for a Sculpture, repeatedly attracted police action, public outrage and accusations of nationalism or Nazi symbolism, while bringing him international recognition. Baselitz continued working into old age, including a series of portraits of his wife Elke, and leaves behind her and their two sons.

Hungarian artist Dóra Maurer, who died aged 88, developed a wide-ranging avant-garde practice spanning experimental printmaking, photography, performance and geometric abstraction. Working under communist rule, she maintained a public career in art education and graphic design while pursuing more experimental work privately. Her international recognition grew substantially from the 2000s, culminating in major exhibitions at Tate Modern, White Cube and other institutions. Maurer's work was shaped by her experiences in Hungary and Budapest, although she rejected the idea that it was defined by a specifically Hungarian character.

Martin Parr, who died aged 73, is remembered for colourful, unsparing photographs that documented people, consumption and social life with a taxonomic eye. His 1986 book The Last Resort, depicting holidaymakers in New Brighton, initially provoked accusations of class condescension but established his reputation. Despite early resistance to his admission to Magnum Photos, Parr later became the agency’s president and gained broad recognition through major exhibitions, books, documentaries and his Martin Parr Foundation. His work ranged from British class and civic life to global travel and obsessive collections of objects and images. Diagnosed with myeloma in 2021, he is survived by his wife Susie, daughter Ellen, grandson George and sister Vivien.

Stephen Dawson, a urologist and pioneering genitourinary medicine consultant, has died of cancer aged 78. After working in London during the emergence of AIDS in the 1980s, he moved to Slough in 1988 and developed a small department at Upton Hospital into the UK’s first fully integrated sexual health service by the time he retired in 2016. In later life he pursued screenwriting and portrait painting, including reaching the final round of the 2016 BP Portrait Awards, and retired to Hastings. He is survived by his partner, Dimitry Kalinin.

Bryan Kneale, the Isle of Man-born sculptor and teacher, has died aged 95. Initially trained and recognized as a painter, he moved into sculpture after studying welding and became known for elegant abstract works that fused organic and industrial forms. His career included a major 1966 Whitechapel Gallery exhibition, teaching roles at the Royal College of Art and Royal Academy, and election as the first abstract sculptor to the Royal Academy in 1974. Deeply attached to the Isle of Man, he created notable public works there, including Legs of Man and a statue of Captain John Quilliam. Kneale received an MBE in 2019 and is survived by his daughter and two grandchildren.

Doris Lockhart Saatchi, who died aged 88 on 6 August 2025, was an American-born art collector and former advertising executive whose partnership with Charles Saatchi helped transform London’s art market. She played a crucial but often under-recognized role in identifying and supporting the Young British Artists, including lending Damien Hirst money to produce his shark work The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living. After separating from Saatchi, she curated exhibitions emphasizing overlooked female artists, served in arts and architectural roles, and later focused on architectural drawings and models. She is survived by her brothers Richard and Jeffrey.

Sir Brian Clarke, who died aged 71 from cancer, was a working-class artist from Oldham who became one of Britain’s most internationally recognised stained-glass designers. Inspired by York Minster and Pop art, he developed bold, colourful work for churches, mosques, airports, offices and major architectural projects, including commissions for King Khalid airport, Pfizer’s New York headquarters and Stansted Airport. Despite commercial success and influential collaborations with architects and artists, Clarke remained marginalised by an art establishment that often treated stained glass as craft rather than fine art. His career was also marked by public disputes, including legal action over Francis Bacon’s estate and conflicts surrounding the Zaha Hadid Foundation. He was knighted in 2024 and survived by his former and later remarried wife, Liz Finch, and their son, Dan.

Thomas Neurath, who died aged 84 from cancer, led Thames & Hudson for roughly half a century, serving as managing director from 1967 to 2005 and chairman until 2021. He expanded the family-owned publisher’s World of Art series to around 300 titles and more than a million sales, while widening its list to include photography, fashion, graffiti, Buddhist and Aboriginal Australian art, and other non-European subjects. Committed to his refugee parents’ socialist ideal of making high-quality scholarship affordable, Neurath nevertheless ran the company as an ambitious commercial enterprise, developing overseas operations including a Paris office and building international publishing partnerships. Remembered as shy, chain-smoking, culturally sophisticated and prone to fierce temperamental outbursts, he is survived by his wife Gun Thor, daughters Johanna and Susanna, and sister Constance.

Cameroon-born curator Koyo Kouoh has died aged 57 after cancer, shortly before she was due to announce the programme for the 2026 Venice Biennale, which had appointed her commissioner. The obituary traces her journey from investment banking in Switzerland to becoming a leading advocate for African and diasporic art, founding Raw Material Company in Dakar and directing Cape Town’s Zeitz MOCAA. Her major exhibition When We See Us explored a century of Black figuration and self-representation, while her pan-Africanist and collaborative approach challenged the dominance of market-based measures of artistic value. She is survived by her husband Philippe Mall, her son Djibril, and her mother and stepfather.

Peter Sedgley, the British op and kinetic artist, died aged 94 on 16 March 2025. Initially trained as an architectural assistant, he began painting after meeting Bridget Riley in 1961 and became known for hypnotic target paintings, programmed light works and kinetic sculptures. Sedgley and Riley co-founded Space, an influential London organisation providing affordable studios for artists. His work gained international recognition, including inclusion in The Responsive Eye at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and a major retrospective in Prague, while his 1972 tiles for Pimlico Underground station remain in use. After spending roughly half a century in Berlin, Sedgley returned to Britain and settled in Worthing, leaving behind his daughter Laura, grandchildren and other family.

Dame Rosalind Savill, who died aged 73 from cancer, directed London’s Wallace Collection from 1992 to 2011 after rising from museum assistant to become a leading scholar of 18th-century French porcelain. Her landmark research on the collection’s Sèvres holdings culminated in a three-volume catalogue, while her directorship transformed the museum’s presentation, restored its sumptuous interiors and broadened its appeal through collaborations, exhibitions and educational initiatives. She later held honorary posts at Waddesdon Manor and the Royal Collection Trust, where she was noted for encouraging junior staff. Savill was also the author of a major study of Madame de Pompadour’s Sèvres collection and is survived by her daughter Isabella, grandson Edward and brother Hugh.

Daniel Spoerri, the Romanian-born Swiss artist credited with pioneering “eat art,” is remembered for works that incorporated food and everyday meals rather than merely depicting them. His best-known creations included snare-pictures made by fixing diners’ remnants to tables and chairs, edible artworks, and the 1983 performance Le Déjeuner sous l’Herbe, in which a meal’s tableware was buried in a trench. His artistic interest in nourishment and consumption was shaped by his wartime childhood: his Jewish father, Isaac Feinstein, was killed during the Romanian Holocaust, while his mother Lydia struggled to take her children to Switzerland. Spoerri later worked with avant-garde and Fluxus artists, founded Edition MAT, ran the Eat Art Galerie, created a sculpture garden in Italy, and settled in Vienna, where he remained critical of Austria’s antisemitic past and rightwing politics. He died aged 94.

Dame Elizabeth Esteve-Coll, who died aged 85, led the Victoria and Albert Museum from 1988 to 1994 and became embroiled in fierce controversy after making nine senior curators redundant and seeking to modernise the institution’s working practices, publicity and finances. Critics accused her of undermining scholarship, while the article argues that some opposition reflected misogyny, class snobbery and hostility to Margaret Thatcher. Her reforms opened eight galleries, raised visitor numbers from 900,000 to 1.35 million and established a highly regarded study centre. She later became vice-chancellor of the University of East Anglia, resigned after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, served as chancellor of the University of Lincoln, and was honoured for promoting Japanese culture.

Derek Boshier, a leading figure in second-generation British Pop Art, has died aged 87. His early paintings—including Special K and England’s Glory—used commercial imagery to question consumerism and the Americanisation of British culture. Unwilling to be confined by the label of Pop artist or by market expectations, he moved between painting, film and other media, later collaborating with David Bowie and The Clash. After teaching in Texas, he settled in Los Angeles, continued reinventing his style and returned to painting in his final years. He is survived by his daughters Rosa and Lily and his second wife, Thelma Gaskell.

Mel Ramsden, who died aged 79, was one of the last surviving members of the conceptual-art collective Art & Language. Born in Derbyshire and raised partly in Australia, he developed an early conceptual practice in New York with Ian Burn and Roger Cutforth before joining Art & Language in 1970. His work challenged conventional ideas of artistic authorship, materiality and value, notably through Secret Painting, Six Negatives and the Documenta installation Index 01. Ramsden also collaborated for decades with his wife Paula Eck, the band Red Krayola and fellow Art & Language member Michael Baldwin, with whom he shared an intentionally non-hierarchical studio practice. Despite the group’s resistance to artistic celebrity, its work later entered major museums and received significant institutional recognition.

Tony Shiels, who died aged 86, was a painter, performance artist and stage magician known for blending surrealism, hoaxes and theatrical showmanship. His alleged Loch Ness monster photographs in 1977 became famous after he suggested they had been staged with a Plasticine model, but the publicity often obscured his importance as a painter. A member of the Penwith Society of Arts, he developed the long-running Sea Heads series and influenced the return of figurative elements to Cornish avant-garde painting. He later moved to western Ireland; his wife Christine died in 2022, and he is survived by their five children.

Bill Viola, who died aged 73 after being diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease in 2012, is remembered as a pioneering video artist who combined slow, technologically innovative moving images with themes of water, mortality, spirituality and rebirth. His early near-drowning influenced works such as The Reflecting Pool, while the death of his mother helped end a creative block and led to major works including The Passing and Nantes Triptych. Influenced by Zen Buddhism, Sufism and Christian mysticism, Viola increasingly engaged with Renaissance art and religious institutions, though critics divided over what some viewed as excessive religiosity and sentimentality. His work achieved broad public appeal and influenced the development and perception of video as an art form; he is survived by his wife Kira Perov and their sons.