Peter Phillips, British Pop Art Originator, Dies at 86

Peter Phillips, British Pop Art Originator, Dies at 86

One of the founders of the British Pop art movement, English painter Peter Phillips died at 86 years old on June 23. His family confirmed the news in an online statement. Born in Birmingham, England, in 1939, Phillips attended London’s Royal College of Art with the likes of David Hockney, Allen Jones, and R.B. Kitaj. There, he became one of the originators of the British Pop art movement in the 1950s and ’60s, which made such elements of pop c…

Peter Phillips, pioneer of British Pop art, 1939–2025

Peter Phillips, The Random Illusion No. 5, 1968. Courtesy the artist Peter Phillips, one of earliest proponents of Pop art in the UK, has died. The artist trained at the Royal College of Art with contemporaries David Hockney, Allen Jones and R.B. Kitaj, and likewise incorporated motifs of mass entertainment and consumer culture into his layered collagelike paintings. In For Men Only Starring MM and BB (1961), painted on wood and over two metres …