Painter, photographer, commercial and stage designer, Hockney is considered one of the most versatile and popular British artists of the 20th century. He studied at the Bradford School of Art between 1953 and 1957 and, in 1959, did a postgraduate course at the Royal College of Art in London, receiving the gold medal in 1962. At the beginning of his career, the critics considered him part of the Pop generation that had come from the Royal College. In 1968 and 1977, he took part in documenta 4 and 6, in Kassel. Since 1982, he has done some Polaroid collages, combining the Cubist principle of simultaneity with photographic time sequence. At the end of the 80s, he produced his first abstract drawings in quadrichrome through computer and photocopier. He has developed a stylised realism in paintings produced on his own photographs.