Published by Waddington Graphics, London 1990

Patrick Caulfield was born in Acton, West London. He studied at the Chelsea School of Art (1956-1960) and at the Royal College of Art (1960-3) where his contemporaries included David Hockney and Allen Jones. He subsequently taught at Chelsea School of Art (1963–71), and in 1964 was included in the New Generation exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery, which resulted in him being associated with the Pop art movement. Caulfield was and remained opposed to this label, seeing himself rather as “a ‘formal’ artist”.

In 2004 Caulfield was included in the touring Tate Britain exhibition Art & the 60s, which was shown at the Auckland Art Gallery. In the accompanying publication he was described as an artist ‘who cannot easily be categorised’, and one who typically presented ‘a banal motif in a flat, stylized and completely unsentimental manner’. His subjects were invariably reduced to their essential components, and depicted in a restricted palette of bold colours.

White Ware Prints is a portfolio of eight screenprints published in an edition of 45, with 13 proofs of each image, by Waddington Graphics, London. The subject of each print is a single white ceramic pot set against a dark background. Caulfield explained that the inspiration for this series came from the Victoria & Albert Museum, in particular its published catalogues of oriental ceramics. The colour of the background varies from print to print, while there are accents of other, brighter hues, and an dominant part of the composition in several prints is a strong source of light emanating from top right.