Across Art Basel, the art world celebrates David Hockney

As one of art’s most bankable names, David Hockney’s work is a regular feature of any given Art Basel fair. Following the artist’s death on 11 June, sightings of his work at this year’s fair carry greater poignancy, as the art world mourns one of its most beloved figures.

No gallery today is as closely associated with Hockney as Annely Juda in London, which has represented him since the 1990s, after his first gallery, Kasmin, closed its London location. Among the Hockney works on its stand this year, Annely Juda is offering Delphiniums on My Garden Table, July 2025 (2025). The artist painted it after his birthday last year, capturing the flowers that were given to him, says the gallery’s founder David Juda, who knew Hockney since the 1960s and sat for him multiple times. The work is on offer for $12m.

Another London gallery, Offer Waterman, specialises in the secondary market for Hockney’s works on paper from the 1960s and 1970s, and has two drawings from that period on its stand, both priced upwards of £100,000. One depicts Mo McDermott, his then assistant; the other is of his close friend Tim Macdonald on Fire Island in New York, known for its queer community and legendary party scene. As Hockney’s biographer Christopher Sykes wrote of the artist’s summers on the island, he was there for “the tea dances, the drugs and the disco”. Indeed, alongside bucolic landscapes and interior scenes, Hockney is also known for more risqué content. In the backroom of the gallery’s stand is a drawing of a naked man in California, “with his willy poking out”, says Robin Cawdron-Stewart, the senior director at the gallery.

Hockney crops up across the fair, including at Pace and Lelong. Richard Gray Gallery from Chicago has sold two works by Hockney, including an $8.5m painting of his studio interior from 2014, to a US collection. Valerie Carberry, its chief executive, recalls her last memory of Hockney at the opening of his retrospective at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris in 2025. “I will always remember the look of joy on his face that night as he opened his greatest career achievement.”

Stands at Art Basel are planned many weeks, if not months, in advance, particularly as shipping and related logistics remain complex and expensive, meaning it is unlikely that any gallery would have brought works to the fair to honour Hockney’s passing. While the impact on his market is yet to be properly studied, one platform, MyArtBroker, has recorded a more than 1,200% increase in collector demand for David Hockney editions within 48 hours of the artist’s death, observed across its private sales platform. Charlotte Stewart, its managing director, said in a statement: “We always expect a response after an artist’s passing, but the scale and speed of this one has been exceptional. What makes Hockney different is that he never [became] a historical figure while he was alive. He remained an active, evolving artist, still experimenting, still capable of surprising collectors. His market was booming when we lost him.”