Celebrating an artist’s mastery of color and graphic elegance

Tate Britain hosts an ambitious survey exhibit of the renowned British artist, Patrick Caulfield (1936–2005).  Here’s a quick look at the highlights of the show and the artist’s oeuvre:

• From the 1960s, Caulfield has been known for his iconic and vibrant paintings of modern life that reinvigorated traditional artistic genres such as the still life. Celebrating the artist’s mastery of color, graphic elegance as well as his wit, this exhibition will offer the chance to reassess his influences and the legacy of his approach to painting.
  
• Patrick Caulfield was born in west London and studied at Chelsea School of Art, followed by the Royal College of Art.  Major exhibitions during his lifetime included retrospectives at Walker Art Gallery Liverpool and Tate (both 1981), Serpentine (1992–3) and Hayward Gallery (1999). In 1993 he was elected a Royal Academician.
  
• He came to prominence in the mid-1960s after studying at the Royal College of Art where fellow students included David Hockney. Through his participation in the defining The New Generation exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1964, he became associated with Pop Art. However he resisted this label throughout his career, instead preferring to see himself as a ‘formal artist’ and an inheritor of painting traditions from Modern Masters such as Georges Braque, Juan Gris and Fernand Léger who influenced his composition and choice of subject matter.
  
• Over thirty significant works from public and private collections have been brought together to represent the key moments of Caulfield’s career. Highlights will include well-known popular paintings such as Interior with a Picture 1985–6 (Tate), Portrait of Juan Gris 1963 (Pallant House Gallery, Chichester) and Pottery 1969 (Tate).
  
• These are being shown alongside lesser known works such as Bend in the Road 1967 (Collection of the Museé national d’historie et d’art, Luxembourg) and Tandoori Restaurant 1971 (WAVE Wolverhampton Art Gallery). The exhibition will also include later paintings such as Bishops 2004 (Private collection, London) and the artist’s final work Braque Curtain 2005 (Tate). Caulfield radically re-imagined traditional genres such as still life and domestic interiors to produce paintings of startling originality.