Stages

The Redfern Gallery are pleased to announce Patrick Procktor: Stages, a selective retrospective of work by Patrick Procktor RA (1936-2003).

Curated by the artist’s biographer Ian Massey, the exhibition is formed of paintings, watercolours and drawings spanning the years 1962 to 2002. Representing work in the genres of landscape, still life, and portraiture, at its centre is a group of remarkable canvases from the 1960s, many of them not seen in public since they were first shown soon after completion.

Procktor first arrived on the London art scene, with the opening of a wildly successful show at the Redfern Gallery in Spring 1963. Critically lauded and a virtual sell-out, it immediately established the artist as a rising star of the contemporary art world. He went on to become a key figure in Swinging Sixties’ London, part of a mythologised circle that included his great friends David Hockney, Christopher Gibbs, and Ossie Clark. And he continued to build on his early success, with highly successful exhibitions in the UK and Europe during the 1970s and ‘80s.

In the later years of his career however, Procktor’s reputation waned, and he became critically marginalised, and largely forgotten. More recently though there has been a resurgence of interest in his work, with UK retrospectives in 2012 and 2016, and in Bologna in 2023.

Patrick Procktor: Stages reveals a highly inventive painter and draughtsman whose work now resonates powerfully with many contemporary artists, among them Kaye Donachie, Elizabeth Peyton, Jack Pierson and Alessandro Raho; and with the fashion designers Jonathan Anderson and Erdem.