Biography

John Hoyland was one of Britain's leading abstract painters, renowned for his bold use of color and inventive forms. After leaving the Royal Academy Schools in 1960, he was included in the influential Situation group exhibitions in 1960 and '61 and was selected as one of Robertson's New Generation artists at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1964. He spent significant time in New York and nurtured friendships with Robert Motherwell, Kenneth Noland, Barnett Newman, and Mark Rothko. It was at this time that Hoyland first encountered the work of European-born Hans Hofmann, who encouraged Hoyland to move at the end of the 1960s towards a more richly allusive non-figuration. Hoyland's first solo museum retrospective was presented at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1967. In 1969, he represented Great Britain alongside sculptor Anthony Caro at the São Paulo Biennale, Brazil. Following this, he was the subject of retrospectives at the Serpentine Gallery (1979), the Royal Academy of Arts, London (1999), Tate St Ives (2006), and was the centerpiece of The Independent Eye exhibition at Yale Center for British Art (2010). In 1982 he won the John Moores Prize, at that period the most prestigious award for painting in Britain. Elected a Royal Academician in 1991, he was appointed Professor of Painting at the Royal Academy Schools in 1999.