John Hoyland, R.A.

Waddington Galleries, London
Alan Wheatley Art, London, where acquired by the present owner

Possibly Edinburgh, The Richard Demarco Gallery, Inaugural Exhibition of Paintings, Sculptures and Prints, August - September 1966 (ex. cat.);
Sydney, Farmers Blaxland Gallery, Colour & Structure: Recent British and Australian Paintings, 13th - 30th May 1970, cat. no.1;
London, Nevill Keating McIlroy, John Hoyland: Early Works, 11th June - 4th July 2008, cat. no.14;
London, Alan Wheatley Art, John Hoyland: Unmistakable Identity, 11th March - 9th April 2009, cat. no.6.

Original canvas. The canvas is sound. There are some extremely minor scuffs and light handling marks around the extreme edges, most noticeable at the corners. There are a very few scattered elements of very light surface dirt. Subject to the above the work is in excellent overall condition. Inspection under ultraviolet light reveals no obvious signs of restoration or retouching. The work is presented unframed. Please telephone the department on 0044 207 293 6424 if you have any questions. .
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The Hoyland Estate are currently preparing the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the Artist’s work and would like to hear from owners of any work by the Artist so that these can be included in this comprehensive catalogue. Please write to The Hoyland Estate, c/o Sotheby’s Modern & Post-War British Art, London, W1A 2AA or email modbrit@sothebys.com

'I would like to make archetypal images of wholeness and have tried to broaden my work over the years, to stretch abstraction, giving it a human face, incorporating the radiance of Matisse and Rothko...'

(John Hoyland, Invisible Artist or Performing Bear, from a talk first given at Tate, London in 1994, and again in 2005 in Mauritius)

To experience the London Art Scene in the early 1960s was to witness a truly seismic shift. Following the decline of Paris as the centre of the art world and the rise of the New York School, a young generation of bold and confident artists emerged out of the London art schools, feeding their ferocious appetites on the large body of magazines and publications that flooded in from the United States, soon followed by the works themselves. At London’s Whitechapel Art Gallery, then the most progressive and forward-thinking public institution in the country, Bryan Robertson championed the work of Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and Helen Frankenthaler. All this proved to be a breeding ground for British talent as a new generation of artists emerged, led by the young John Hoyland.

Hoyland was without doubt one of Britain’s leading abstract painters of the 1960s, taking part in the seminal Situation group shows in 1960 (the year after he left the Royal Academy Schools) and 1961, and the New Generation show of 1965. The 1960s would go on to see Hoyland receive his first solo exhibition at the Whitechapel, and then together with Anthony Caro, represent Britain at the 1969 São Paulo Biennale. To many, Hoyland’s paintings of the 1960s capture the very essence of the decade. Not distracted or side-tracked by the rise of British and American Pop Art, instead Hoyland’s work remained rooted in the pure, bold application of colour, seen so clearly in the present work, with its deep, rich Rothko-red palette, working to a size that challenged the norms of British art of the day (a similar work, 28.5.66, is in the collection of the Tate, London). Whilst early in the decade pattern played a part in his work, in the second half of the 1960s Hoyland became focused on the ‘colour light architectures’ that became the focus of his Whitechapel exhibition. The application, forms and medium are incredibly pure in every sense, and seen today appear as fresh as they did upon their initial inception. As the recent retrospective at Damien Hirst’s newly opened Newport Street Gallery in London showed, these are paintings to be experienced, to be encountered, for to stand before them one is able to fully appreciate the brilliance and stark originality of an Artist that, until his death in 2011, refused to stand still.