John Latham

John Aubrey Clarendon Latham, (23 February 1921 – 1 January 2006) was a Northern Rhodesian-born British conceptual artist. Life and work Latham was born in Northern Rhodesia to the cricketer and colonial administrator Geoffrey Latham. He was educated in England at Winchester College. In the Second World War he commanded a motor torpedo boat in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. After the war he studied art, first at the Regent Street Polytechnic and then at the Chelsea College of Art and Design. He married fellow artist and collaborator Barbara Steveni in Westminster in 1951. The spray can became Latham's primary medium, as can be seen in Man Caught Up with a Yellow Object (oil painting, 1954) in the Tate Gallery collection. In addition to spray paint, Latham tore, sawed, chewed and burnt books to create collage material for his work, such as Film Star (1960).