Lawrence Alloway (1926 - 1990)

RA Collection: People and Organisations

English art critic and curator who worked in the United States from 1961. In the 1950s, he was a leading member of the Independent Group in the UK and in the 1960s was an influential writer and curator in the US. He first used the term “mass popular art” in the mid-1950s and used the term “Pop Art” in the 1960s to indicate that art has a basis in the popular culture of its day and takes from it a faith in the power of images.From 1954 until his death in 1990, he was married to the painter Sylvia Sleigh (1916-2010).