DAVID INSHAW (born 1943) Biography
POP ART (1958-c.1975)

Provenance

Bought by J. Walter Thompson (advertising agency with extensive art buying programme) in late 60's
Private collection, England, 1985 to 2006

Condition

Three canvases incorporated in one larger canvas
Frame made of canvas and constitutes part of the image

Description / Expertise

Kiss, Kiss, Kiss is a powerful and important example of British Pop Art which he painted in 1966 for his final show at the Royal Academy Schools. It was purchased for the corporate collection of J. Walter Thompson, probably the most well known and successful advertising companies in the world in the 1960s. During its many years in the collection, the painting was a favourite of the directors and became the subject of fierce competition to hang in their personal offices. It was acquired from a director of the company who had purchased it from the collection. It has never before been offered on the open market.

David Inshaw studied painting at the Beckenham School of Art from 1959 to 1963.
In 1964 he was awarded a French Government Scholarship to study and live in Paris for six months and was, in the same year, elected to the Royal Academy Schools. In 1966 he organised the Young Contemporaries Exhibition in London and taught printmaking and painting at the West of England College in Bristol where he remained as a lecturer until 1975.

He held his first solo show at Arnolfini Gallery in 1969. In 1972 the formed a Ruralist group with Graham and Anne Arnold which, in 1975, became The Brotherhood of Ruralists; seven artists which included Sir Peter Blake, his then wife Jann Haworth, Graham & Ann Arnold and Graham & Annie Ovenden. The foundation of the Ruralist Brotherhood coincided with David Inshaw's appointment to a two-year Fellowship in Creative Art at Trinity College Cambridge, which he continued for a further year.

In 1975 he was invited by Leslie Waddington to hold a one-man show at the Waddington Galleries in Cork Street, London and in 1980, the Tate Galley purchased his seminal painting, The Badminton Game (painted 1972-3), which was, for many years the most popular painting in the whole Gallery (by postcard sales). In 1981-2 he collaborated with the BBC to make 'Between Dreaming and Waking' as part of the BBC 'Arena' arts series

David Inshaw has work in many private and public collections including the Arts Council of Great Britain, the British Council, City of Bristol Art Gallery & Museum, the Department of the Environment, Devizes Museum, Sunderland Museum and Art Gallery and in the Tate Gallery's collection. He has and continues to exhibit widely and frequently, whether as part or a group or touring show or in one of his many solo exhibitions, the first of which was in Bristol at the Arnolfini in 1969, the most recent has seen him return to Bristol once more for his exhibition 'Friends and Influences' at the Royal Western Academy in early 2003 and a show at Agnew's in London in 2004, which was hugely successful. His painting The Badminton Game was regarded by many as the "star of the show" at Tate Britain's Art of the Garden exhibition in the same year.