David Jowett Greaves Oxtoby (born 23 January 1938 in

Horsforth Horsforth is a town and civil parishes in England, civil parish within the City of Leeds, in West Yorkshire, England, lying about five miles north-west of Leeds city centre. Historically a village within the West Riding of Yorkshire, it had a p ...

), is an artist associated with the Pop Art Movement. Oxtoby studied at

Bradford College Bradford College is a further and higher education college in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England, with approximately 25,000 students. The college offers a range of full and part-time courses from introductory level through to postgraduate l ...

from 1950 to 1957, and at the

Royal Academy Schools The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its purpo ...

from 1960 to 1964. He taught at the

Minneapolis Institute of Arts The Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) is an arts museum located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. Home to more than 90,000 works of art representing 5,000 years of world history, Mia is one of the largest art museums in the United State ...

from 1964 to 1965, and subsequently at

Maidstone College of Art The Kent Institute of Art & Design (KIAD, often ) was an art school based across three campuses in the county of Kent, in the United Kingdom. It was formed by the amalgamation of three independent colleges: Canterbury College of Art, Maidstone Col ...

. in 1978 a book of his work "Oxtoby's Rockers", with text by David Sandison was published by

Phaidon Press Phaidon Press is a global publisher of books on art, architecture, design, fashion, photography, and popular culture, as well as cookbooks, children's books, and travel books. The company is based in London and New York City, with additional off ...

."David Oxtoby"
Bradford College ''175 Heroes'' website, accessed 28 October 2016. He has said of his work painting images of popstars and pop music: "I started working on musical subject matter while studying graphics at Bradford College of Art during the fifties, completing three or more self-imposed record covers a day. These were actually small paintings (a fact I didn’t realize for many years) with lettering typeset in the Print Department and shoved on as an afterthought." Much of his work of the 1960s was lost in a warehouse fire. in the 1980s Oxtoby gave up exhibiting so as to devote himself to a series of large paintings on rock music.

Collections

Oxtoby's work is in the collections of both the

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

the

National Portrait Gallery, London The National Portrait Gallery (NPG) is an art gallery in London housing a collection of portraits of historically important and famous British people. It was arguably the first national public gallery dedicated to portraits in the world when it ...

, Sheffield Art Gallery and other galleries in the UK and abroad.

References

1938 births Living people British pop artists Alumni of the Royal Academy Schools People from Horsforth {{UK-artist-stub