A painter, sculptor and teacher, Antony Donaldson studied at the Regent Street Polytechnic School of Fine Art from 1958 to 1962 and Slade School of Fine Art obtaining a London University Postgraduateship of Fine Art in 1962-1963. He had his first one-man exhibition at the Rowan Gallery in 1963 where he continued to exhibit until the late 1970's. In 1962 Donaldson exhibited with the Young Contemporaries a touring exhibition with the newly established Arts Council and in 1964 exhibited in the significant exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery The New Generation.
His early friendship with Patrick Caulfield, Allen Jones and Peter Phillips linked him directly to the group of artists who established the Pop Art movement in London during the 1960s.
In 1962, Donaldson developed in his painting the simplified treatment of the female figure that was to typify his work over the next half decade. These depictions of beach beauties 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 greyness and deprivations of the immediate post-war years. Like Hockney, Donaldson dreamt of a sun-drenched, laid-back southern California life and subsequently settled in Los Angeles from 1966-1968. On returning to London he produced sculptures based on his paintings of Los Angeles cinemas. Beach and nocturnal Parisian scenes followed, as well as girls and hanging trapeze sculptures.
During the next period of his career Donaldson worked primarily as a sculptor; interested in unusual pigments such as metal flake car paint and iridescent fish-scale paint, sculpture materials including fibreglass, stone and metals. He completed sculpture commissions for Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo; a fountain at Tower Bridge Piazza and a large torso in Anchor Court became tourist attractions; later works include 'Master of Suspense', a high sculpture of the film director Alfred Hitchcock for the site old Gainsborough Studios in Islington. In 2005 on seeing his paintings of the early to mid-1960's, in the survey exhibition of British Pop Art, curated by Marco Livingstone for the Museo de Bellas Artes in Bilbao, Donaldson felt confirmed in his impulse to return to painting after a gap of over a quarter of a century. 'That was the beginning of it. It charged me up…'. Having long divided his time between London and a house in the south of France, he had a new studio built in France essentially for painting.
Donaldson has exhibited extensively in Europe and there was a retrospective of Donaldson's highly coloured sixties' pictures at the Mayor Gallery in 1999. His works are held in many public collections including the Tate Gallery, the Arts Council, the British Council, the British Museum and the Government Art Collection, the National Museum of Wales, University College of London and the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.
1939
Born in England.
1957 - 1962
Studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, London.
1966 - 1967
Lived and worked in Los Angeles.
1967 - 1992
Lived and worked in London.
1992
Lives and works between London and France.
Awards
1962 - 1963
Post-Graduate Scholarship in Fine Art at London University.
1963
Second Prize, John Moores Open Competition, Liverpool.
1966 - 1967
Harkness Foundation Fellowship to U.S.A.
Collections
Arts Council of Great Britain.
Arts Council of Northern Ireland.
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
Berado Collection, Belem Cultural Centre, Lisbon, Portugal.
Bradford City Art Gallery.
British Council.
British Museum.
Contemporary Art Society, London.
Ferrens Art Gallery, Hull.
Folkwang Museum, Essen, Germany.
Government Art Collection, London.
Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield.
Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, Portugal.
Hedendaagse Kunst, Utrecht, Holland.
Leicester Education Authority.
National Museum of Wales, Cardiff.
Olinda Museum, Brazil.
Porto Allegre Museum, Bahia, Brazil.
Southampton University.
Stuyvesant Foundation [now dispersed].
The Tate Gallery, London.
The Wilde Theatre, South Hill Park Arts Centre, Bracknell.
Williams College and Museum of Art, Williamstown, Mass.
Ulster Museum, Belfast, Northern Ireland.
University Collrge, London
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.
One Man Shows
1963
Rowan Gallery, London.
1965
Rowan Gallery, London.
1966
Rowan Gallery, London.
1967
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.
1973
Felicity 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.
Hogarth Galleries, Sydney.
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.
French Paintings, Paisnel Gallery London.
Selected Group Exhibitions
1958- 1962
Young Contemporaries, London.
1960
London Group, London.
1962
Five Young Artists, Rowan Gallery, London.
Artists of Promise, Midland Group, Nottingham.
Young Contemporaries, Arts Council Touring Exhibition.
1963
Spring Exhibition, Bradford City Art Gallery.
Southampton University.
The John Moores Open Competition, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.
1964
The New Generation, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London.
New Image, Arts Council Gallery, Belfast.
Pick of the Pops, National Museum of Wales, Cardiff.
1965
4iem Biennnale des Jeunes Artistes, Musee d'Art Moderne, Paris.
Op and Pop, Riksforbundet for Bilande, Konst och San, Stockolm.
1966
London under Forty, Galeria Milano, Milan.
1967
Il Tempo del l'Imagine, Biennale Internazionale, Museo Civico, Bologna.
Pittsburgh International, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh.
Recent British Painting, The Peter Stuyvesant Foundation,
The Tate Gallery, London.
1968
The New Generation, Interim Exhibition, Whitechapel Gallery, London.
From Kitaj to Blake, Non-Abstract Art in Britain, The Bear Lane, Oxford.
1969
New Art, Art Museum of Ateneum, Helsinki.
Post 1945 Art in Britain, CALA Arts Centre, Cambridge.
Art for Industry, Royal College of Art, London.
1970
Some Recent Art In Britain, Leeds City Art Gallary, Leeds
The Slade 1771-1971, The Royal Academy, London.
The Bradford Print Biennale, Bradford City Art Gallery.
1972
Contemporary Prints, Ulster Museum, Belfast.
1974
Premier Salon International d'Art Contemporain, Grand Palais,Paris.
Contemporary British Painting, Grenoble.
1975
Salon International d'Art 75, Basle.
Artists of the Print Workshop, Galleria Grafica, Tokyo.
1978
Small Works, Newcastle Polytechnic Art Gallery.
1980
FIAC. Grand Palais, Paris.
1981
Gallery Artists, Rowan Gallery, London.
1985
Small Works, Juda Rowan Gallery, London.
Summer 1975, Everard Read Gallery, Johannesberg.
25 Years. Three Decades of British Art, Juda Rowan Gallery, London.
1987
British Pop Art, Birch and Conran Fine Art, London.
The Print Workshop, Galleria Grafica, Tokyo.
Graphics by Gallery Artists, Rowan Gallery, London.
1991
Gallery Artists, Mayor Rowan Gallery, London.
1993 - 1996
Salon de Mars, Paris, Galerie Daniel Gervis.
1995
Post War to Pop, Whitford Fine Art, London.
1997
Treasure Island, Foundation Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon.
Pop Art 60, Transatlantic Crossing, Belem Cultural Centre, Lisbon.
1999
Europop, Arken Museum, Denmark.
2000
Mennesket, Arken Museum, Denmark.
2001
Royal Academy Summer Show, London.
2002
POP ART & CO, Belem Cultural Centre, Lisbon
2003
20th Century Masters, Mayor Gallery, London.
2004
Work from the Sixties, Mayor Gallery, London.
Pop Art UK- British Pop Art 1956-1972, Galleria Civicia di Modena, Italy.
Royal Academy Summer Show, London.
Art & the 60's This was tomorrow, Tate Britain, London.
Art & the 60's This was tomorrow, Gas Hall, Birmingham Museum.