Patrick Caulfield CBE, RA

Patrick Caulfield CBE, RA (1936–2005) was a British painter and printmaker known for images of interiors, still lifes and everyday objects reduced to bold outlines, flat areas of colour and carefully controlled spatial relationships. Although closely associated with British Pop Art, Caulfield himself resisted the label, and his work drew strongly on the example of modern European painters including Georges Braque, Juan Gris and Fernand Léger.

Born in London, Caulfield studied at Chelsea School of Art from 1956 to 1960 and at the Royal College of Art from 1960 to 1963, where his contemporaries included David Hockney and Allen Jones. He returned to Chelsea as a teacher in 1963. The following year he was included in the influential New Generation exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery, which helped establish the reputation of a new generation of British artists.

Caulfield developed a highly recognisable pictorial language in which domestic interiors, architectural details, food, vessels and other familiar objects were simplified into crisp silhouettes and areas of saturated colour. From the 1970s onwards he increasingly introduced passages of illusionistic or highly detailed painting into otherwise schematic compositions, creating deliberate contrasts between different ways of representing the same space.

Printmaking formed an important part of his practice. Introduced to screenprinting in 1964 by Richard Hamilton and the printer Chris Prater, Caulfield found the medium particularly suited to his precise lines and unmodulated colour. He went on to produce an extensive body of prints alongside his paintings.

Caulfield exhibited widely in Britain and internationally. Major exhibitions included surveys at Tate and the Walker Art Gallery in 1981, the Serpentine Gallery in 1992 and the Hayward Gallery in 1999. He was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1987, elected a Royal Academician in 1993 and appointed CBE in 1996. A major retrospective was held at Tate Britain in 2013.

His work is represented in major public collections in Britain and internationally, including Tate, which holds both paintings and his complete print output.