John Hoyland
Delta Sierra 30.8.77, 1977
Acrylic on canvas
228.5 x 213.5 x 3.6 cm
90 x 84 x 1 3/8 in
90 x 84 x 1 3/8 in
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...
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 communication of feeling. For Hoyland’s entire career he remained dedicated to painting — when discussing his work ethic, he noted ‘I don’t know if it’s a Northern thing, from being born into poverty. But it’s a driven thing.’ He always pushed forwards, from the early works of the 60s and 70s — blocks of colour masterfully and geometrically arranged to later works that are defined as free flowing, intuitive and spontaneous.
In the 1960s Hoyland titled his paintings solely with the date of their completion. In the early 1970s, at the suggestion of his New York dealer André Emmerich, he started to add words to his titles. At first these were not directly descriptive but instead, as he put it, offered ‘an oblique resonance’ which could be ‘open to interpretation’. In this period, the works are characterised by a sensitivity to the nuances of shape, staining, bleeding and texture. He began to use a palette knife and pollyfilla along with paint, building layers to form robust structures. The constructive process was still intuitive, creating a tangible presence within a dream-like space. By the end of the 1970s, London was again established as Hoyland’s principal home, although for the rest of his life he travelled widely, in particular becoming a frequent visitor to the Caribbean and the Tropics in general. In 1979 Hoyland was the subject of a second retrospective, at the Serpentine Gallery.
The later works become more free-flowing, with a tendency towards thick impasto acrylic paint and varied forms, expanding upon the precision and simplicity of his earlier works.
Delta Sierra 30.8.77 demonstrates the arc of the artist’s work as it evolved from the huge colour-stained canvases of the 1960s through to the textured surfaces of the 1970s. These are followed by the more spatially complex and improvised paintings of the 1980s and then the semi-figurative work first inspired by the artist’s travels to Bali in the 1990s.
Works from 1977 feature in the permanent collections at Tate Britain, UK and IMMA, Ireland.
In the 1960s Hoyland titled his paintings solely with the date of their completion. In the early 1970s, at the suggestion of his New York dealer André Emmerich, he started to add words to his titles. At first these were not directly descriptive but instead, as he put it, offered ‘an oblique resonance’ which could be ‘open to interpretation’. In this period, the works are characterised by a sensitivity to the nuances of shape, staining, bleeding and texture. He began to use a palette knife and pollyfilla along with paint, building layers to form robust structures. The constructive process was still intuitive, creating a tangible presence within a dream-like space. By the end of the 1970s, London was again established as Hoyland’s principal home, although for the rest of his life he travelled widely, in particular becoming a frequent visitor to the Caribbean and the Tropics in general. In 1979 Hoyland was the subject of a second retrospective, at the Serpentine Gallery.
The later works become more free-flowing, with a tendency towards thick impasto acrylic paint and varied forms, expanding upon the precision and simplicity of his earlier works.
Delta Sierra 30.8.77 demonstrates the arc of the artist’s work as it evolved from the huge colour-stained canvases of the 1960s through to the textured surfaces of the 1970s. These are followed by the more spatially complex and improvised paintings of the 1980s and then the semi-figurative work first inspired by the artist’s travels to Bali in the 1990s.
Works from 1977 feature in the permanent collections at Tate Britain, UK and IMMA, Ireland.