Martin Gayford author page

Martin Gayford biography

Martin Gayford is a writer and art critic whose work focuses on art history and visual culture. He studied philosophy at the University of Cambridge and art history at the Courtauld Institute of Art at the University of London. His career has included writing about art and music, contributing to newspapers, magazines and exhibition catalogues, working as art critic for The Spectator and The Sunday Telegraph, and becoming Chief Art Critic for Bloomberg News.

His books include The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Arles, published by Little, Brown with a release date of 14 November 2006. The book examines the period in 1888 when Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin shared a studio in the Yellow House in Arles.

Gayford has written on Van Gogh, Constable and Michelangelo. His books include A Bigger Message: Conversations with David Hockney, The World According to David Hockney, Venice: City of Pictures, Love Lucian: The Letters of Lucian Freud, 1939–1954, and How Painting Happens (and why it matters).

He has collaborated with David Hockney on A History of Pictures: From the Cave to the Computer Screen, a book about visual expression and picture-making from cave paintings to computer screens. A children’s version, A History of Pictures for Children, was written by David Hockney and Martin Gayford, illustrated by Rose Blake, and released on 2 October 2018.

How Painting Happens (and why it matters) draws on Gayford’s decades of conversations with practising artists to explore the practice, meaning and potential of painting.