October 4, 2005

Patrick Caulfield, 69, Painter Of Style-Bending Pop Art Dies

By ROBERTA SMITH

Patrick Caulfield, a British painter of spare, bright still lifes and interiors whose canny blending of realist styles was most often associated with Pop Art, died on Thursday in London. He was 69.

His death was confirmed by the Waddington Galleries, which had represented the artist for more than 30 years.

Born in 1936, Mr. Caulfield intended originally to become a commercial artist, but he switched to painting while studying at the Chelsea School of Art in the late 1950's. He continued his studies at the Royal College of Art, where other students included the painters David Hockney and R. B. Kitaj and the sculptor Allen Jones; like them, he was interested in tempering fine art with a commercial coolness. The three became prominent members of Britain's "New Generation" of Pop and abstract artists, which also included Anthony Caro, Bridget Riley, Philip King and Howard Hodgkin and was named after a landmark exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1965.

Mr. Caulfield had his first gallery exhibition at the Robert Fraser Gallery in London that year and his first show in New York at the Robert Elkon Gallery in 1966. His work has been the subject of several retrospectives, including ones at the Hayward Gallery in London and the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven in 1999.

Mr. Caulfield rarely depicted the figure, preferring to focus instead on objects and places that implied the human presence, just offstage. Using black outlines and saturated colors, he coaxed out the geometric scaffolding beneath perceived reality, often displaying a wry wit. Early subjects included a loudspeaker, a lampshade and nearly abstract grids of windowpanes, as well as empty bars and cafes. His sense of artifice suggested the formal influence of Mondrian, Stuart Davis and Ben Nicholson, but his main allegiance was to the still life tradition of Braque and Picasso.

Much of his work has an underlying melancholy, as suggested by his 1968 painting "Guitar and Rug" in the collection of the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington. Its nearly solid blue ground and outlined guitar, rolled-up rug and empty wine bottle offer a modern update on Blue Period Picasso.

In the late 1960's, Mr. Caulfield began a long involvement with printmaking. He would later design book covers, posters and sets for ballets by Frederick Ashton and Michael Corder. In the 1980's, his work became more complicated, introducing elements of Photorealism and trompe l'oeil and more active contrasts of light and shade.

Mr. Caulfield's first marriage, to Pauline Jacobs, ended in divorce. He is survived by his wife, Janet Nathan, also an artist, and three sons from his first marriage.