Patrick Caulfield

About

This June Waddington Custot Galleries presents a wide-ranging survey of works by the late Royal Academician Patrick Caulfield. Sensitive preparatory drawings and studies for prints offer a rare glimpse into the process behind the artist's precisely executed paintings, a selection of which will also be on display. By assembling works in various mediums, the exhibition charts the multifaceted development of one of the finest artists of 20th Century Britain. Dissatisfied with the Pop Art label, Caulfield achieved a contemporary coolness by blending a number of styles. His early paintings Perfume Jar (1964) and View of the Rooftops (1965) show his commitment to realist subjects but adopt the bright colours, thick outlines and geometric clarity of formalism. A range of preparatory drawings from the 1970s such as Study for ‘In My Room' and Study for ‘Paradise Bar' (both circa 1974) — meticulously gridded and marked by cautious flashes of colour — demonstrate the careful consideration behind the perfectly balanced large-scale paintings of interiors that cemented his reputation. Devoid of human subjects, these works achieve a sense of artifice and theatricality in spite of Caulfield's formal economy. By the 1980s, Caulfield was also using relief within his paintings to add further definition to the still-life objects. Light emerges as one of Caulfield's central preoccupations; his in-depth studies of lampshades from one of the artist's sketchbooks, as well as a number of his paintings, Glass of Whisky (1987) and Corner Lamp (1998), feature areas of dramatic light and shadow played out on canvas and board. This theme continues in Caulfield's surreal set design for his commission for Michael Corder's ballet Party Game, staged at the Royal Opera House in 1984. Gigantic lampshades form a fantastical backdrop, shedding light in alternate bars of yellow and black, recalling the strong blocks of colour in his canvasses. These designs will be shown to the public for the very first time at Waddington Custot Galleries. A fully illustrated catalogue with essay by Marco Livingstone will accompany the exhibition.