Art in America: Patrick Caulfield 1936-2005

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Patrick Caulfield 1936-2005

David Ebony

Patrick Caulfield, 69, prominent British Pop painter, died of cancer Sept. 29 in London. He had been known since the early 1960s for brightly colored canvases that often feature imaginative interiors or still lifes combining crisp, hard-edge graphic design with refined photo-realist-style imagery. Born in Acton, West London, he was a high-school dropout. But after enlisting in the Royal Air Force, he began to take night classes at London's Harrow School of Art. In 1956, he transferred to the Chelsea School of Art, and beginning in 1960 he attended the Royal College of Art, along with future colleagues and friends David Hockney and R. B. Kitaj.

Inspired early on by Constructivism and Cubism, especially the work of Juan Gris, Caulfield established his signature Pop style in the early 1960s. His reputation grew after his works were featured in "The New Generation," a landmark 1964 group exhibition at London's Whitechapel Art Gallery, which introduced a number of key British Pop artists. He was represented by London's Waddington Galleries for more than 30 years, and showed in New York at Robert Elkon. In the 1970s and '80s, he completed several mural commissions, and designed sets and costumes for a number of productions for the Royal Ballet.

Caulfield participated in numerous group exhibitions around the world, and had many solo shows, including several museum retrospectives. Most recently, a 1999-2000 traveling museum show of his work debuted at the Hayward Gallery, London, and appeared in the U.S. at the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven. His most recent gallery solo was held in 2002 at Waddington. In 1985, he was nominated for the Turner Prize, and he received England's prestigious Jerwood Painting Prize in 1995. He was awarded a C.B.E. the following year.

Despite a prolonged illness, Caulfield worked up until the time of his death. His final painting, completed in late September, Braque Curtain, is a tribute to the seminal Cubist.