Patrick Caulfield

Patrick Caulfield: First evening courses and then art studies

Patrick Caulfield was born in London on 29 January 1936. He spent some of his childhood in Bolton, his parents' hometown, to which they returned during the Second World War to work in a factory for the war-time aircraft manufacturer De Havilland. After leaving school, Patrick Caulfield found a job at the food company Crosse & Blackwell, where he initially worked as an archivist and later in a subordinate position as a designer. To avoid being called up for military service, Caulfield volunteered for the Royal Air Force at the age of 17. After seeing the film Moulin Rouge in 1952 about the life of the painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901), he began attending evening classes in his spare time at the Harrow School of Art (now part of the University of Westminster). He then studied at the Chelsea School of Art from 1956 to 1960, where he won his first awards which enabled him to study in Greece after graduating. 

A celebrated Pop Art artist who did not want to be one

During his trip to Greece, Patrick Caulfield intensively studied the Minoan frescoes, the bright, clear colours of which had a lasting influence on his later work. Back in London, he continued his studies at the Royal College of Art from 1960 to 1963, and during this time, his participation in the Young Contemporaries exhibition in 1961 brought him overnight fame alongside his fellow artists David Hockney (b. 1937), Allen Jones (b. 1937), R. B. Kitaj (b. 1932-2007) and Peter Phillips (b. 1977). Following his studies, Caulfield himself taught at the Chelsea School of Art from 1963 to 1971. After presenting his paintings at the New Generation Show at London's Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1964, he became increasingly associated with Pop Art, a label that the artist expressly - and unsuccessfully - rejected throughout his life. He saw himself far more as a ‘formal’ artist who developed his own style.

Figurative painting out of simple colours and contours

Patrick Caulfield cultivated a close friendship with his fellow countryman and painter John Hoyland (1934-2011) and received important inspiration from the Spanish painter Juan Gris (1887-1927) and the Belgian Surrealist René Magritte (1898-1967). He himself painted landscapes and everyday objects as mere black outlines, which he filled with simple, bold colours, but unlike his friend Hoyland, he rejected abstraction and remained true to figurative painting. In later years, he also took on commissions for the stained-glass windows of The Ivy restaurant and a 12-metre-long carpet for the headquarters of the British Council in Manchester, as well as designing stage sets for the Royal Opera House. When a warehouse fire destroyed a large part of Charles Saatchi's (b. 1943) collection in 2004, three works by Patrick Caulfield also fell victim to the fire.

Patrick Caulfield died on 29 September 2005 in his hometown of London.