Throughout his career, British pop artist Antony Donaldson (b1939) has appeared as intent on pure form as subject matter in his graphically assured silhouettes portraying the allure of modern urban life: art deco cinema facades, mirage-like Hollywood searchlights, motor racing, planes, architecture and, above all, female pin-ups characterised by an aloof eroticism.
Since his euphoric early works, produced during London’s postwar reawakening, Donaldson has continued to use lucid colour, with increasingly finely gradated and painterly finishes. He has also worked in sculpture, as in his monumental, in every sense, portrayal of Alfred Hitchcock on the former site of Gainsborough Studios in north London.
Studio International talks to the artist about home visits from his tutors when he was at the Slade in the 1950s, being influenced by Nicolas de Staël and discussing pornography with the Beverly Hills sheriff’s department.