John Hoyland (b.1934 Sheffield, UK – d.2011 London, UK) was one of the most inventive and dynamic abstract painters of the post-war period. Over the span of more than a half-century his art and attitudes constantly evolved. A distinctive artistic personality emerged, concerned with colour, painterly drama, with both excess and control, with grandeur and above all, with the vehement communication of feeling.

Hoyland was born in Sheffield in 1934 to a working class family. He had an early interest in art and enrolled in the local art school at the age of eleven, before studying at the Royal Academy in London from 1956 to 1960. While at the Royal Academy he first encountered the art of French painter Nicholas de Staël and saw the influential display of American Abstract Expressionism in The New American Painting show at Tate Gallery in 1959. Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman, slightly later Morris Louis and Hans Hofmann, joined his early loves of Matisse, Van Gogh, Rouault and Chaïm Soutine. Abstract Expressionist Robert Motherwell would become an important friend and mentor. In the 1960s and 1970s Hoyland’s art developed in dialogue with American artists including Kenneth Noland and Larry Poons, with British modernist sculpture another important exemplar – sculptor Anthony Caro became a life-long friend.

After leaving the Royal Academy in 1960, Hoyland was included in the influential Situation exhibitions and was later selected as a New Generation artist at the Whitechapel Gallery. In 1964, Hoyland first visited New York City, where he would go on to live and work for extended periods in the late 1960s and early 1970s. On returning to London after this first influential trip to America, Hoyland started work on a group of paintings that mark his artistic maturity.

7.11.66 is an early work, exemplary of his color-stained canvases of the 1960s, which were titled solely with the date of their completion. Mel Gooding describes the 1960s works as ‘an astonishing series of huge acrylic canvases of high-key deep greens, reds, violets and oranges deployed in radiant fields, stark blocks and shimmering columns of ultra-vibrant colour. It was an achievement in scale and energy, sharpness of definition, originality and expressive power unmatched by any of his contemporaries, and unparalleled in modern British art’ (Gooding, 2011). An early career retrospective curated by Bryan Robertson was held at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1967; in 1969, alongside Anthony Caro, Hoyland represented Great Britain at the Sāo Paulo Biennale in Brazil.

Works from this period were exhibited in his first solo museum show at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1967; his defining retrospective at the Serpentine Gallery (1979–80); and his solo exhibition at Newport Street Gallery (2015-2016).

The solo exhibition John Hoyland: The Last Paintings at Museums Sheffield, UK opened in 2021.

Hoyland’s work is in many collections, including the Royal Academy of Arts, UK; Tate, UK; National Galleries of Scotland, UK; National Museum of Wales, UK; National Museums of Northern Ireland, UK; The British Museum, UK; Victoria and Albert Museum, UK; The Hepworth, Wakefield, UK; Arts Council Collection, UK; Government Art Collection, UK; British Council, UK; Museum of Modern Art, NY, USA; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, USA; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, VA, USA; Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA; Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven, CT, USA; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, NY, USA; Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, Canada; Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Museum Liaunig, Neuhaus, Austria; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia; Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide; and Art Gallery of Western Australia.