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Lot Essay
The present work comes from a series of paintings containing circle motifs, begun by Hoyland in 1983. The canvas consists of thinly poured layers of paint, built up with a large, sprawling, freely painted lilac shape and splashes of yellow. The canvas has an underpainting of black, linking the work to one of Hoyland's more sombre series of circle paintings. In the bottom left and top right hand corners Hoyland has introduced more thickly painted circular forms. These are painted in shades of red, burgundy, brown and green (bottom left) and blue and yellow (top right). The top right disc is almost cancelled out by a swirl of blue over-painting.
When Zansa (3) was first exhibited, John McEwen wrote in the catalogue that Hoyland's aim in his art 'has always been the greater liberation of form and colour.' McEwen noted that a pattern had emerged, whereby one series of paintings tended to build up a particular form, while the next broke it down. Out of this fragmentation emerged the new form. He described how the rectangular compositions of the 1970s grew almost to the margins of the canvas, and were then pushed back to the diagonal and were finally fragmented into a series of smaller rectangles. These in turn became less defined and were gradually transformed into triangles which, when broken down, gave birth to the circles of the extended series to which Zansa (3) belongs' (see exhibition catalogue, John Hoyland: Recent Paintings, London, Waddington Galleries, 1987).
'Hoyland embarked on the ''circle paintings''... in the spirit of an adventurer, and with a sense of extreme risk. Those paintings are like the reports from deep space of a solitary astronaut concerning his encounters with strange and unanticipated worlds, improbable planets ... They are beautiful and monstrous; they spin in our sight from the banal to the metaphysical, from the comic to the cosmic' (see M. Gooding, John Hoyland, London, 1990, p. 10).
The full title of this painting Zansa (3) 26.6.86, includes the date on which it was completed by Hoyland. Kumari 28.7.86 and the present work were exhibited at the same 1987 exhibition. Both paintings are dominated by a central splash of lilac, described in the 1987 catalogue by John McEwen as representing Hoyland 'at his most ostentatious ... the sort of painting that wins prizes' (see Exhibition catalogue, John Hoyland: Recent Paintings, London, Waddington Galleries, February 1987, p. 4)
When Zansa (3) was first exhibited, John McEwen wrote in the catalogue that Hoyland's aim in his art 'has always been the greater liberation of form and colour.' McEwen noted that a pattern had emerged, whereby one series of paintings tended to build up a particular form, while the next broke it down. Out of this fragmentation emerged the new form. He described how the rectangular compositions of the 1970s grew almost to the margins of the canvas, and were then pushed back to the diagonal and were finally fragmented into a series of smaller rectangles. These in turn became less defined and were gradually transformed into triangles which, when broken down, gave birth to the circles of the extended series to which Zansa (3) belongs' (see exhibition catalogue, John Hoyland: Recent Paintings, London, Waddington Galleries, 1987).
'Hoyland embarked on the ''circle paintings''... in the spirit of an adventurer, and with a sense of extreme risk. Those paintings are like the reports from deep space of a solitary astronaut concerning his encounters with strange and unanticipated worlds, improbable planets ... They are beautiful and monstrous; they spin in our sight from the banal to the metaphysical, from the comic to the cosmic' (see M. Gooding, John Hoyland, London, 1990, p. 10).
The full title of this painting Zansa (3) 26.6.86, includes the date on which it was completed by Hoyland. Kumari 28.7.86 and the present work were exhibited at the same 1987 exhibition. Both paintings are dominated by a central splash of lilac, described in the 1987 catalogue by John McEwen as representing Hoyland 'at his most ostentatious ... the sort of painting that wins prizes' (see Exhibition catalogue, John Hoyland: Recent Paintings, London, Waddington Galleries, February 1987, p. 4)