Artist Patrick Caulfield, CBE was an English painter and printmaker best known for his collection of Pop Art canvases, paintings and prints. Patrick Caulfield was often described as a Pop Artist, but Patrick Caulfield’s flat colours, ordinary interiors and black outlines were individual and distinct. Some of Caulfield’s best known works include After Lunch, Happy Hour and Wall Plate: Highlights.
Patrick Caulfield was born in London in 1936, and spent part of his childhood in Lancashire before moving back to London after WWII. He worked in the design department of Crosse & Blackwell, (where one of his tasks was varnishing the chocolates on display) and spent three years national service with the Royal Air Force. In 1956 Patrick Caulfield attended Chelsea School of Art and in 1960 undertook postgraduate studies at the Royal College of Art. Here Caulfield was identified, along with the previous year's intake (David Hockney, Ron Kitaj, Allen Jones and Derek Boshier) as one of the 'Pop' artists.
At the start of his career Patrick Caulfield's paintings were characterised by flat images depicting objects that were paired with angular geometric devices or isolated against unmodulated areas of colour. Caulfield adopted the anonymous techniques of sign painting, dispensing with visible brushwork and distracting detail and simplifying the representation of objects to a basic black outline in order to make them appear more iconic.
From around the mid-1970s Patrick Caulfield began to incorporate more detailed, realistic elements into his work and a variety of different styles—some objects have heavy black outlines and flat colour, but other are depicted more realistically, and other areas are executed with looser brushwork.
In 1987 Patrick Caulfield was nominated for the Turner Prize and in 1996 he was made a CBE. In 1965 Caulfield was awarded the Prix de Jeunes Artistes in Paris and a retrospective of his work was held at the Tate Gallery in London in 1981.
Buy signed limited edition prints by Patrick Caulfield at Opus Fine Art; the home of Contemporary art.