The following was written and submitted by Jean Ershler Schatz, artist and researcher from Laguna Woods, California.

Derek Boshier was born in 1937 in Portsmouth, England. He studied at the Yoevil School of Art from 1953 to 1957, and at the Royal College of Art from 1959 to 1962. He is a contemporary of David Hockney, Allen Jones, Peter Phillips and Ronald Kitaj. He is also one of the group of young artists who, in 1961, launched Pop Art in Britain, and therefore was included in shows in the Paris Biennale, the Hague, Vienna and Berlin, Munich, and York.

He taught at the Central College of Art and Design and the Hornsey College of Art in London from 1963 through 1973, and the Royal College of Art from 1973 through 1975, and in 1975 at the University of Victoria, Vancouver Island, Canada.

In the content of his pictures Boshier showed man as "Manipulated Man", according the human figure the same treatment as mass-produced consumer goods. All the elements in his work were taken from printed representations, advertisements, etc. and nothing from life.

Boshier came to the United States in 1979 and returned to painting about the same time. He attributes the return to a desire to work again in color and a desire to reexperience the physical act of applying paint to canvas. He moved to Houston, Texas, and began creating works that drew on Texas culture for their subjects. As well as commenting on a basic bond of vulnerability that ties all of us, Boshier's works force us to reexamine our perceptions of the individuals, real or fictional, who hold a fascination in our society.

Sources include:
The Oxford Companion to 20th Century Art, edited by Harold Osborne
Robert Hughes in ARTnews, November 1984

Derek Bosier, born 1937, first came to prominence in the early 1960s as part of the Bristish Pop Art* movement along with David Hockney, Allan Jones, R.B. Kitaij and others. During the course of his career, which began as a student at the Royal College of London, he has worked as a painter, object maker, conceptual* artist, filmmaker and photographer.

During the late 1970s and 80s Boshier designed graphic work for David Bowie and the Clash while teaching and painting in Texas. After a brief stint back in the U.K., Boshier has been working in Los Angeles, finding inspiration in the local pheneomena--freeways, architecture, collectors and transsexuals.

He has exhibited continuously for 40 years, and was the subject of a film called Pop Goes the Easel.

Boshier's work is held in museums around the world.

Selected Collections

Museum of Modern Art, New York
Tate Gallery of British Art, London
Tate Modern, London
British Museum, London
Arts Council of Britain, United Kingdom
Menil Collection, Houston
Victoria and Albert Museum,London
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego
High Museum, Atlanta
Dallas Museum of Fine Art, Dallas
National Gallery of Scotland
British Council Collection, United Kingdom



* For more in-depth information about these terms and others, see AskART.com Glossary http://www.askart.com/AskART/lists/Art_Definition.aspx