(b Portsmouth, 19 June 1937). English painter, sculptor, photographer and printmaker. He studied painting and lithography at Yeovil School of Art in Somerset (1953-7), Guildford College of Art (1957-9) and the Royal College of Art, London (1959-62), where he was one of the students associated with Pop art. Like R. B. Kitaj and David Hockney, Boshier juxtaposed contrasting styles within his paintings, but he favoured topical subject-matter such as the space race, political events and the Americanization of Europe. The satirical edge of such paintings as Identi-kit Man (1962; London, Tate), which pictured the threat posed by advertising to individual identity, was prompted by his reading of Marshall McLuhan, Vance Packard and other commentators. In the autumn of 1962 Boshier went to India on a one-year scholarship, producing paintings based on Indian symbolism (accidentally destr.). Returning to England he adopted a hard-edged geometric style, often using shaped canvases, abandoning overt figuration but continuing to allude through form to architectural structures and to the grid plans of cities.
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