Patrick Caulfield was born in London on 30 January 1936. He spent his wartime childhood in Lancashire. Before undertaking National Service, he worked for an advertising company and began night-school art classes, whilst serving in the Royal Air Force. He won a place to study as a commercial painter at the Chelsea School of Art (1956-60), before switching to fine art. He then entered the Royal College of Art (1960-63), where his fellow pupils included David Hockney and R B Kitaj. After he left, he returned to Chelsea as a teacher. In 1964 he exhibited at the hugely influential ‘New Generation’ show at London’s Whitechapel Gallery, which resulted in him being associated with pop art. His first solo exhibition was at the Robert Fraser Gallery, London in 1965. Emerging in the 1960s, alongside David Hockney and Peter Blake, Caulfield became known for a distinctive style of planes of colour bound by strong black lines, creating stylised still lifes and interiors. His mature work also incorporated trompe l’oeil effects and photo-realism. He took part in many solo and group exhibitions both in Britain and internationally. Important group exhibitions in which he participated were at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (1964), the Royal Academy of Arts, London (1987), and ‘Pop Art’, also at the Royal Academy; touring to Museum Ludwig, Cologne and Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid (1991-92). Retrospectives of his work have been held at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, touring to the Tate Gallery, London (1981) and at the Serpentine Gallery, London (1992-93). From around the mid-1970s, Caulfield began to incorporate more detailed, realistic elements into his work, After Lunch (1975) being one of the first examples. Still-life: Autumn Fashion (1978) contains a variety of different styles – some objects have heavy black outlines and flat colour, but a bowl of oysters is depicted more realistically, and other areas are executed with looser brushwork. Caulfield later returned to his earlier, more stripped-down, style of painting. Caulfield’s paintings are figurative, often portraying a few simple objects in an interior. Typically, he uses flat areas of simple colour surrounded by black outlines. Some of his works are dominated by a single hue. His noteworthy After Lunch, 1975 may be found in the collection of the Tate Gallery. During the 1980s he again turned to a more stripped-down aesthetic, particularly in large paintings in which the precise disposition of only a few identifiable elements miraculously transforms an ostensibly abstract picture through the creation of a vivid sense of place. He also he also enjoyed commissions such as the design for a stained-glass window at the Ivy restaurant in London in the 1990s and a large carpet for the atrium of the British Council building in Manchester. He designed posters, book covers and ceramics, as well as sets for the ballet. A major retrospective of Caulfield’s paintings, organised by the British Council, was shown at the Hayward Gallery, London in 1999, and subsequently toured to the Musée National d’Histoire et d’Art, Luxembourg, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, and the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut (1999-2000). In 1987 Caulfield was nominated for the Turner Prize. He was elected RA in 1993 and was appointed CBE in 1996.
In a 1999 interview with The Observer newspaper, Caulfield said his interest in interiors developed in art school as a reaction against social realism. ‘So I tried to do things that were really alien to me, invented interiors that I had never seen. I tended to choose things that were slightly past, out of fashion, which would make it more distant.’ After a long struggle with cancer, Caulfield died in London on 29 September 2005 and was buried in Highgate Cemetery. Tate Director Sir Nicholas Serota described Caulfield as ‘one of the most original image makers in a talented generation of British artists. His still-lifes and interiors captured mood and decor with incisive style.’ Those who have followed his style include Michael Craig-Martin and latterly Julian Opie. Fellow artist Howard Hodgkin would write of Caulfield: ‘Some people have tried to ape his style, which does not work because his language is so idiosyncratic, so totally his own that it is not transferable.’ David Hockney stated: ‘He was a unique artist. I mean, it’s all idiosyncrasy, really, and Patrick was a marvellous example. He was a quiet person, and I’ve always loved his work. I’m very, very sad.’