Exhibition revives work of anti-careerist British artist Neil Stokoe

Art school contemporary of David Hockney shunned self-promotion but is now subject of retrospective

In 1970, the artist Neil Stokoe looked as if he had all the ingredients for breakout success. He was friends with Francis Bacon, an exhibition of his work was about to open, and he’d been part of the “golden years” at the Royal College of Art, alongside the likes of David Hockney and Frank Bowling.

Yet as his contemporaries’ careers took off, Stokoe and his colourful, large-scale figurative paintings that chimed with 1960s modernism, slowly faded from view. But now this largely forgotten figure who appeared during the British pop art moment is undergoing a revival thanks to a retrospective, the first since his death in 2019.