Peter Phillips came to Pop Art with an extraordinary speed, conviction and clarity of thought and has since stayed true to its principles whilst continuing to push the idiom into new directions. One of the rare British artists never to have spurned the label, Phillips approached Pop as a question of matching subject matter to the style and technique. In this sense he was closer to the American Pop artists than almost any of his British colleagues. One of the 1962 graduates of the College of Art, who established Pop Art as a movement, Phillips already had success as a student when he was included in the Young Contemporaries 1959-62, the John Moors Exhibition, Liverpool, Sidney Janis Gallery, New York and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo. His early success in America led him to move to New York during 1964-1966. His first one-man show was held there by the Kornblee Gallery in 1965. Phillips has had three museum retrospectives, in 1972 at the Westfaelischer Kunstverein in Muenster, in 1982-83 at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool and in 2002 at the Galleria Civica in Modena.