Patrick Caulfield
Patrick Caulfield (1936 – 2005) was a student at the Royal College of Art between 1960-63 alongside David Hockney and Allen Jones. However, his subject matter drew more from the masters of modern art such as Braque, Gris and Picasso than from the consumer culture that preoccupied his fellow students.
Caulfield's work is characterised by a reductive, streamlined use of line and the depiction of banal, everyday objects saturated in colour. He consistently used screenprint for his graphic work following his introduction to the medium by artist Richard Hamilton and printer Chris Prater in 1964. In the 1960s artists began to use pre-existing commercial techniques such as silkscreen, in a completely innovative and groundbreaking way. The deceptive simplicity of Caulfield’s images, perfectly matched by the aesthetic capacities of the process, is clear throughout the various phases of his printmaking career, as illustrated in this Online Viewing Room. He created an immaculate and instantly recognisable pictorial style, which had a profound influence on generations of artists, including many of today’s leading painters.
In the audio clip below Alan Cristea talks about the first time he saw Caulfield’s work in the 1960s, working with the artist from the 1970s up until Caulfield’s death in 2005, and the indelible contribution Caulfield made to British printmaking.
“Patrick regarded printmaking as an essentially simple and direct medium. One of the first body of works I encountered upon arriving at Waddington’s was Patrick’s illustrations to poems by the late nineteenth century poet, Jules Laforgue. To my mind this book of twenty-two screenprints (some of which are illustrated below) ranks as one of the most successful and felicitous marriages of text and image in the twentieth century. Laforgue’s witty, ironical and melancholy insights into the significance of mundane, everyday objects, as he moves easily back and forth between reality and reverie, find an almost uncanny parallel in Caulfield’s attitude to life and art a century later.” Alan Cristea
The works selected below by Cristea are quintessential examples of Caulfield’s approach to printmaking and represent his desire to entice the spectator into his world of contemplative irony.
If you are interested in purchasing any of the prints please contact info@cristearoberts.com.
Image above: Les Demoiselles d'Avignon vues de Derrière, 1999. Screenprint. Paper and image 132.1 x 111.7 cm / 52 x 44 inches. Edition of 65.
Listen In: Alan Cristea talks about Patrick Caulfield
Listen In: Alan Cristea talks about Patrick Caulfield
Patrick Caulfield on the series Some Poems of Jules Laforgue, 1973
Installation views
Contact us
Contact us
For further information or if are interested in purchasing any of the prints please contact info@cristearoberts.com.
Image: Patrick Caulfield photographed in his Belsize Park studio by Jillian Edelstein, 1999
