Literature

This gouache is one of the rare known early works made by the artist.

The Mayor Gallery played a momentous role in the rediscovery of Pauline Boty through its exhibition in 1998 The only Blonde in the World held together with Whitford Fine Art, triggering British and international Pop collectors and institutions to rediscover the works of the forgotten co-founder of British Pop. Her tragic death at the age of 28 years old had only too rapidly swallowed the career of the shooting star.

Boty had trained at the Royal College of Art (RCA) in London from 1958 to 1961 where she studied stained glass design. Her talent and energy rapidly gained the friendship of her contemporaries, David Hockney, Derek Boshier, Peter Philips and their older peer Peter Blake. With great confidence, despite being one of the only female painters in this group, her subjects quickly evolved in a distinct Pop iconography, her paintings made like collages of the Swinging sixties where film stars are celebrated (Jean-Paul Belmondo, Marilyn Monroe, Monica Vitti).

Strong of intellectual wits, encouraged by her close entourage towards more political subjects, she imbued her striped bordered compositions with a sexual dimension and criticism of patriarchy, like Countdown to violence or her more explicit works It’s a Man’s Worl II, Tom’s Dream, Sunflower Woman, and Scandal which reproduced the famous Lewis Morley photo of Christine Keeler on a chair.

Only two years after her marriage with Clive Goodwin (1963), and a short acting career, Boty was diagnosed with cancer through prenatal visits. Refusing treatments to save her child, she gave birth to their daughter in February 1966. Pauline Boty sadly died early July 1966 having just starting a series of erotic paintings commissioned by the audacious co-director of National theatre Kenneth Tynan. Bum is the last oil that Pauline Boty painted, a female bum taking the centre of a coloured theatre stage; often read as an impudent adieu to her male dominated world.

Following her first solo exhibition in 1963 at Grabowski London, The Mayor Gallery held two successful solo exhibitions in 1993 and 1998 placing paintings in institutions and private Pop collections. Her first museum retrospective was held at Wolverhampton Art Gallery (UK) in 2013. Several national and international shows included her works in Pop Art exhibitions: Sztuki Łódź, (1981), Barbican (1993), Arken Museum, Denmark (1999), Menil Collection, Houston (2001), Tate Britain (2004 & 2021), Bilbao Fine Arts Museum (2006), Kunsthaus Zurich (2008), Brooklyn Museum (2014)Museum het Valkhof Nijmegen (2012), Walker Art Centre (touring to Dallas Art Museum and Philadelphia Museum of Art) (2016), Kunstmuseum Wolfsfurg (2016), Scottish National Gallery of Modern Edinburgh (2019), MAMCO Nice (2020), Tate Modern (2023) Holburne Museum Bath (2025) amongst many others (read full list on paulineboty.org).

Most recently her work was part of the exhibition at More Museum, Gorssel (NL) titled Pop Models Women in Pop Art, 22 June-28 Sept 2025 which also included the works of Ferdi, Sue Dunkley and Jann Haworth also presented by The Mayor Gallery.