John Hoyland R.A. (British, 1934-2011)
22.8.73

signed and titled with date 'JOHN HOYLAND/22.8.73' (to the canvas overlap)
acrylic on canvas
(unframed)

Dimensions: 91.5 x 91.5 cm. (36 x 36 in.)

With Alan Wheatly Fine Art, London

Exhibited:
London, Alan Wheatley Fine Art, John Hoyland, Unmistakable Identity, 11 Mar-9 Apr 2009, cat.no.16

We are grateful to Wiz Patterson Kelly at Hoyland Studios LPP for her assistance in cataloguing the present lot

Hoyland Studios is preparing a forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the Artist's paintings and would like to hear from owners of any works by John Hoyland. Please write to Hoyland Studios, c/o Modern British and Irish Art, Chiswick Auctions, Barley Mow Centre, Chiswick London, W4 4PH Auctions, Barley Mow Centre, Chiswick London, W4 4PH or email: modernbritishart@chiswickauctions.co.uk

“There is no place for cynicism, only joy, passion and wonderment, clarity and eagerness.” - John Hoyland, Tate Gallery, 1994

John Hoyland, born in 1934 to a working-class family in Sheffield, maintained throughout his career a deep commitment to joy, passion and clarity. These qualities are intrinsically present in many of his works. Colour consistently takes centre stage in his paintings, with each canvas conveying a sense of exploration and discovery through richly textured surfaces and vibrant, luminous palettes.

The paintings at this time in the early 70s use a lot of pinks and oranges, amber. At the time his partner was Eliose Laws, the R&B/jazz singer and she would tour in Vegas with her saxophonist brother Ronnie; then, Hoyland, an early riser would go into the desert while everyone else was still sleeping, he loved, as Mel Gooding said in his monograph on Hoyland, ‘the intensely brilliant desert light of Navada’ which influenced his work over those few years.

22.8.73 is no exception to this; the work is richly painted with bold oranges and red tones. It belongs to a significant period in Hoyland’s artistic development. In 1963, he encountered acrylic paint, a medium that transformed his approach to painting and greatly expanded the possibilities of his practice. A formative trip to New York soon after exposed him to the work of leading American abstractionists, encouraging him to pursue a more ambitious and expansive language of colour and form, one that would come to define his work throughout the 1970s. However, Hoyland clearly was moving away from the acrylic-stained canvases with their flat planes of diluted washes and slabs of bold pure colour. Rather than painting in the manner of Mark Rothko, who clearly was a point of reference, Hoyland’s works are more textural, with heavy impasto, and the shapes are more landscape than architectural.

During this decade, Hoyland frequently titled his works using dates rather than descriptive titles. This decision reflected a conceptual concern within his practice: by avoiding narrative or figurative references, he directed attention towards the formal qualities of the painting itself. Colour relationships, scale and surface became central to the meaning of the work. These date-titled paintings are closely associated with a period in which Hoyland’s large-scale acrylic canvases reached a particularly confident and expressive maturity.