DAVID HOCKNEY’S EARLIEST SELF-PORTRAITS? The Bradfordian: The Magazine of the Bradford Grammar School

Two of the artist’s earliest self-portraits, created while he studied at the school and published here in the school magazine, The Bradfordian. Hockney’s cartoon-style self-portraits appear in the March 1953 issue (235), both signed in print ‘Okni’ and depict the young David protesting ‘about Compulsory Running’; in the second image opposite he is seen being pushed by another boy in a bath chair alongside a dry stone wall.

Very good condition, bound in printed green card wrappers; one torn corner.

DAVID HOCKNEY attended Bradford Grammar School between 1948 and 1953 when he enrolled at Bradford College of Art and then the Royal College of Art from where stardom beckoned. His illustrations to The Bradfordian are among his earliest surviving works and already show Hockney’s visual imagination at work.

Ever the non-conformist it is fascinating to see the young man (all of 15 at the time of this publication) already protesting about compulsory physical education. A little later he forced the Royal College of Art to change its Diploma rules when he refused to write a formerly compulsory dissertation in order to graduate. Then as now Hockney insisted he would be judged on his artworks alone.