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.

16.5.66, painted during what is considered the most pivotal period of John Hoyland’s career, demonstrates the artist’s exploration into form and expanses of vivid colour. In 1956, Hoyland visited the Modern Art in the United States exhibition at the Tate Gallery, where, for the first time, he encountered American abstract art. In the 1950s and 1960s, post-war Britain was enthralled by the ground-breaking work of artists such as De Kooning, Pollock and Rothko. In this atmosphere of Abstract Expressionist experimentation, Hoyland searched for his own individual artistic style.

The mid 1960s, when the present work was painted, proved to be an extremely important time for Hoyland. In 1964, he made his first visit to New York, at the invitation of Helen Frankenthaler, and while he was there, he met the critic Clement Greenberg. In New York, Hoyland was also exposed the work of Hans Hoffman whose translations of form, colour and space had a seminal impact on Hoyland’s artistic method. Similarly, Hoyland's discovery of acrylic paint, new to the market in 1963, facilitated elements of speed and versatility within the artist’s work. Having grown tired of the long drying time of oils, Hoyland was now able to implement a more instinctive use of colour.

In 16.5.66, the viewer is confronted with Hoyland’s intuitive and dynamic handling of the acrylic paint. The striking shades of red and green offset one another in a brilliantly assertive interplay between colour and shape.

‘The shapes and colours I paint and the significance I attach to them I cannot explain in any coherent way. The exploration of colour, mass, shape, is, I believe, a self-exploration constantly varied and changing in nature: a reality made tangible on the painted surface.'
-John Hoyland