Abstract composition

Details

John Hoyland, R.A. (1934-2011)
Abstract composition
oil on canvas
20 x 24 in. (50.8 x 61 cm.)
Painted circa 1958.

Provenance

Purchased from the artist by the present owner in 1960, when they were both in their final year studying at the Royal Academy Schools.

Special notice

Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent.

Lot Essay

Few paintings have survived from Hoyland's four years at the RA Schools, (1956-1960). In his early years as an art student Hoyland was still experimenting with Sheffield landscapes and abstract-figuration influenced by Nicholas de Stael. By around 1958 his work made the transition to pure abstraction, a shift that may register the recent influence (personal, not stylistic) of William Turnbull. The careful construction, block by geometric block, of the Sheffield townscapes and odd-shapes of his still-lives are replaced by a purely arbitrary placement of soft-edged irregular colour forms relating ambiguously to an atmospheric field of brilliant colour. There is no subject but colour and form, light and space; the relation between components is entirely intrinsic and non-referential. (see M. Gooding, John Hoyland, London, 2006, p. 17 and 23).

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