Painter and photographer David Hockney is regarded as one of the most influential British artists of our time. London's Tate Britain museum will exhibit the world's most extensive retrospective of his works from Thursday. They include iconic paintings from his first visit to Los Angeles in the 1960's, as well as pieces from his personal life.

As a major contributor to the Pop art movement, David Hockney is one of Britain's greatest living artists. As he approaches his 80th birthday, the Tate Britain museum is offering an unprecedented overview of more than 250 pieces.

The show has pulled together some of Hockney's most famous works, covering six decades of his life while living in London, Yorkshire and Los Angeles. Some of the paintings have never been seen in public.

Museum-goers can see Hockney's classic works, including paintings of his family and friends, self-portraits, as well as iconic images of swimming pools in Los Angeles. Also on display, Hockney's celebrated Yorkshire landscape alongside his vast painting of the Grand Canyon. It brings together works of British and U.S. landscapes he painted decades ago.

"There is a wonderful room of very iconic paintings David made on his first trip to Los Angeles in the mid-1960s. So we have the painting of the Big Splash and Sunbather. Really sort of cool, sophisticated modernist depiction of Los Angeles. One of the interesting things for me is that we think we know so many of these iconic pictures because they produce them very heavily, we see them in books, we see them in every show around. But they really rarely been seen together. I think that’s really unique about the show. The opportunity to look back around the work and experience the work we think we know," Helen Little, assistant curator with Tate Britain, said.

Hockney is an artist who frequently changes his style and embraces new technologies. New technology has become his favorite tool for experimental artwork.

"David is one of the first artists to use the iPad when it came out ‘round 2010. It really has become the extension of his preoccupation and fascination of drawing. Prior to that, he would take a sketch book on his travels and depict the people around him. He does the same now, but using his iPad and presenting many of them as animations so you get to see the finished drawing, but also the layers and sort of moving image as it's created," Little said.

It has been more than 30 years since a retrospective like this has been organized. It provides a new generation the opportunity to see his work. After London, the exhibit will move on to Paris and New York.