Derek Boshier was one of the 1962 graduates of the College of Art, who established Pop Art as a movement. Together with his fellow students David Hockney, Allen Jones, Peter Phillips and Kitaj, he participated in the landmark Pop Art in Britain at the Young Contemporaries exhibition.
Boshier had his first one-man show, Image in Revolt, at the Grabowski Gallery, 1962, and has had several hundred international solo and mixed exhibitions since. In 1963 he represented Britain at the Paris Biennale. His participation in early Pop Art exhibitions established him as a central figure of the movement. In 1964 he was included in the Pop exhibition at Hague, Vienna and Berlin and in 1976 in Pop Art In England in Hamburg, Munich and New York.
Boshier taught at the Central College of Art and Design, London and at the Hornsey College of Art, London until 1973, and from 1975-9 he taught at the Royal College of Art, London. In 1980 Boshier joined the University of Houston, Texas, eventually becoming professor.
Boshier’s art has gone through various phases, touching on Pop and Op Art, hard-edge Abstraction and politically radical conceptual art.
Boshier was the recipient of the Honorary Fellowship of the RCA in 2016 as well as receiving the Guggenheim fellowship and NEA award for the arts. Notably too, he is an accomplished teacher and lecturer.
Public collections include
British Council, London
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Peter Stuyvesant Collection, Holland
Tate Britain and Tate Modern, London
Victoria & Albert Museum, London
HRH The Queen, Windsor Castle
The National Gallery of Art, Canberra, Australia