Explore: John Hoyland

(1934 - 2011)

John Hoyland was a leading British abstract painter, who became well-known during the 1960s. He studied figurative fine art at Sheffield School of Art, abandoning this approach, later while at the Royal Academy Schools in London. He was heavily influenced by the exhibition The New American Painting, held at the Tate Gallery, London (1959), and which included work by American abstract painters, particularly Mark Rothko. In that same year Hoyland’s abstract paintings were removed from his graduation show by the President of the Royal Academy and he received a Diploma based only on his figurative work. During the 1960s and 1970s Hoyland lectured at art colleges in London and developed close links with America. In 1970 he was appointed as the Charles A. Dana Professor of Fine Art at Colgate University, Hamilton, New York. He returned to England in 1973. The vibrancy of colour in Hoyland’s work is also the result of his extensive travels to India, South-East Asia, Australia, the Caribbean and the Eastern Mediterranean. His work is represented in numerous British and international collections, including: the Tate Collection, London; the Albright-Knox Gallery, New York; and the Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro. In 2001 he received an Honorary Doctorate from Sheffield Hallam University. His solo exhibitions include retrospectives at the Royal Academy of Art and Graves Art Gallery Sheffield (both 2001) and The Trajectory of a Fallen Angel, Tate St Ives, 2006.