The Way Forward: Derek Boshier and the Sixties

Gazelli Art House London is pleased to present The Way Forward: Derek Boshier and the Sixties, the first posthumous solo exhibition dedicated to Derek Boshier (1937—2024). Curated with renowned art historian Marco Livingstone, the exhibition focuses on works from the 1960s and charts the transformations in Boshier’s worldview and visual style, in parallel to wider changes in society. This landmark presentation revisits Boshier’s pivotal transition from pioneering Pop figuration to bold geometric abstraction, a shift catalysed by his travels to India in 1962 under a Commonwealth scholarship.

Among the first exponents of British Pop Art, Boshier distinguished himself from contemporaries such as Peter Blake and Pauline Boty through his unique brand of satirical social commentary. Together with fellow RCA students David Hockney, Allen Jones, Peter Phillips and R.B. Kitaj, he participated in the landmark Young Contemporaries exhibition at R.B.A. Galleries London in 1962, which propelled Pop Art to public prominence.

As early as 1963, Boshier had developed a distinctive approach to abstraction, embracing shaped canvases and vibrant geometric compositions. Moving away from his earlier more figurative Pop works, Boshier began employing dynamic colour contrasts and layered forms to create spatial ambiguity and a sense of movement. Although aligned with the aesthetics of post-painterly abstraction in the US by artists such as Kenneth Noland and Ellsworth Kelly, Boshier’s pieces are infused with the experiences when travelling in India, alongside the British Pop iconography he was so instrumental in shaping.

Complementing the presentation of Boshier’s paintings from the 1960s in the gallery’s main space will be a selection of works by artists who were also part of the contingent at the Royal College of Art associated
with the rise of Pop Art in Britain: from the 1959 intake with Boshier are R. B. Kitaj, David Hockney, Allen Jones and Peter Phillips; Pauline Boty, who began her studies a year earlier in the Stained Glass department and became a fast friend; Patrick Caulfield, who arrived at the College a year after Boshier; and three artists, Peter Blake, Joe Tilson and Richard Smith, who had completed their studies at the College in the mid-1950s but who became friends, mentors, and sources of inspiration to the younger artists including Boshier himself. Ken Russell’s celebrated BBC film Pop Goes the Easel, which introduced Pop Art to the general public, featured Boshier alongside Blake, Boty, and Phillips.