Born in Acton, London in 1936, Patrick Caulfield studied at Chelsea School of Art from 1956 to 1960 and returned there to teach from 1963 to 1971. In the intervening years he studied at the Royal College of Art where he was a contemporary of David Hockney, R.B. Kitaj and Allen Jones. He became connected with this generation of ‘Pop’ artists, although his work was very different in style from his contemporaries. At this time, he expressed a great admiration for the work of Fernand Léger and Juan Gris and developed a style using bright, flat colours outlined with a contrasting tone. He frequently chose the traditional subject matter of still life and interiors for his work but interpreted them in a totally modern way. Caulfield found screenprint to be an ideal vehicle for this and he regularly deployed the medium from the 1960s onwards to explore a bold use of line and colour. This in turn informed and complemented his activities as a painter.
His first solo exhibition was held in London in 1965 and his international reputation was quickly established with a string of one-man shows held in the UK and in many countries across the world. Retrospectives of his work were held at the Tate Gallery in London in 1981 and again in 2013.