Antony Donaldson (British b.1939)
Although Donaldson was not part of the generation of Royal College of Art students, his early friendship with Patrick Caulfield, Allen Jones and Peter Phillips linked him directly to the group of RCA students who established Pop Art as a movement at the 1961 Young Contemporaries Exhibition in London.
In 1962, Donaldson developed the simplified treatment of the female figure that typified his work over the next half decade. Youthful, shapely and sexually confident, these women strike flirtatious poses and reveal themselves almost wantonly to the viewer's gaze. Even when clothed in their bathing suits, or when showing us nothing more than their faces, it is the exposed surface of their perfect flesh that one first notices. Their facial features are depicted in a generalized way, to emphasise the fact that these are not portraits of particular individuals but fantasy images formed in the mind of a young man.
These depictions of beach beauties, strippers and starlets bask in the prospect of pleasure, of an existence characterised by never-ending relaxation and leisure, and as such they perfectly capture the mood of the time - the demands for the good life after the grayness and deprivations of the immediate post-war years. Like Hockney, Donaldson dreamt of a sun-drenched, laid-back southern California life and settled in Los Angeles 1966-1968. The bold simplicity of his compositional schemes and the central role accorded to flat areas of saturated colour were confirmed by his American experience.
Donaldson's work has been included in all international, overview exhibitions on Pop Art and in all publications on the movement.
Donaldson currently lives and works in London.
Public collections include
Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Belfast
Contemporary Art Society, London
Foundation Stuyvesant
Porto Alegre Museum, Brazil
Arts Council of Great Britain
Arts Council of Northern Ireland
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
Berado Collection Sintra Museum of Modern Art, Portugal
British Council, London
British Museum, London
Folkwang Museum, Essen, Germany
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Olinda Museum, Brazil
The Tate Gallery, London
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, Portugal
Hedendaagse Kunst, Utrecht, Holland
Solo Exhibitions
1963, Rowan Gallery, London
1966, Rowan Gallery, London
1968, Nicholas Wilder Gallery, Los Angeles; Rowan Gallery, London
1970, Galerie von Loeper, Hamburg; Rowan Gallery, London;
1971, Galeria Milano, Milan; Galerie Muller, Cologne; Folkwang Museum, Essen; Galerie Richard Fonke, Ghent; Galerie du Luxembourg, Paris
1972, Rowan Gallery, London; Felicity
1973, Samuel Gallery, London; Galerie du Luxembourg, Paris
1976, Galerie du Luxembourg, Paris
1977, Drawings, J.P.L. Gallery, London; Drawings, Galerie du Luxembourg, Paris; Felicity Samuel Gallery, London
1979, Rowan Gallery, London; Galerie Alain Blondel, Paris
1981, Rowan Gallery, London
1983, Bonython Gallery, Adelaide
1984, Juda Rowan Gallery, London
1985, Galerie Daniel Gervis, Paris; Corcoran Gallery, Los Angeles
1989, Mayor Rowan Gallery, London
1992, Galerie Daniel Gervis, Cannes
1999, First works, Mayor Gallery, London
2004, Hollywood Remade, Mayor Gallery, London
2007, Projections, Rocket Gallery, London
2008, French Paintings Paisnel Gallery, London
2009, Fly low, fly fast and turn left, Galerie du Centre, Paris