Penny Day
Head of UK and Ireland
Lot 112*,AR
John Hoyland RA(British, 1934-2011)22.11.66 182.8 x 304.8 cm. (72 x 120 in.)
Amended
15 June 2016, 15:00 BST
London, New Bond StreetSold for £98,500 inc. premium
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Christopher Dawson
Head of Department
Ingram Reid
Director
John Hoyland RA (British, 1934-2011)
22.11.66
signed 'HOYLAND' (on the canvas overlap)
acrylic on cotton duck
182.8 x 304.8 cm. (72 x 120 in.)
(unframed)
signed 'HOYLAND' (on the canvas overlap)
acrylic on cotton duck
182.8 x 304.8 cm. (72 x 120 in.)
(unframed)
Footnotes
Provenance
With Nicholas Wilder Gallery, Los Angeles, 1970, where acquired by the present owner
Private Collection, U.S.A.
Exhibited
London, Whitechapel Gallery, John Hoyland paintings 1960-67, April-May 1967, cat.no,86 (ill.b&w)
Los Angeles, Nicholas Wilder Gallery, 1967
We are grateful to the Hoyland Studio for their assistance in cataloguing this lot.
By 1965 John Hoyland was considered among the most vibrant and vital young artists working in the country. Having previously exhibited as part of the influential 'Situation' group in 1960 and '61 he also featured in the celebrated 1964 'New Generation' exhibition curated by Bryan Robertson and was also selected by Robertson to feature in a survey of British art, 'Private View', of the same year. And so following a visit to Hoyland's new and significantly larger Kingston-upon-Thames studio, Robertson, invigorated by the ambition and scale of the artist's most recent work suggested a major solo exhibition. This was planned for early 1967 at the Whitechapel Gallery.
Energised by the prospect of such a high profile showing (an exhibition to be in the same venue and of the same scale as Mark Rothko's seminal 1961 exhibition which was well known to Hoyland), the artist embarked on a fruitful body of work. The 'stain' paintings of 1965-7 are amongst the most confident and defining of Hoyland's formative output. Immediately prior to the commanding soft-edged, geometric aesthetic employed in the works, Hoyland had visited New York and Vermont. Travelling on a grant from the Peter Stuyvesant Foundation, he met Robert Motherwell and Helen Frankenthaler, Barnett Newman and Rothko. He also met the critic Clement Greenberg and was introduced to the works of the 'Post-Painterly Abstractionists' such as Kenneth Noland and Jules Olitski. These encounters were to leave an indelible mark upon Hoyand's approach, yielding monumental results. Mel Gooding comments; 'The magisterial impersonality of the paintings from these years, the authority and their objectivity, derives from a distilled energy of both thought and emotion, and an absolute concentration, like that of the contemplative, forgetful of circumstance.' (Mel Gooding, John Hoyland, Thames & Hudson, 2006, p.53).
Dating to this pivotal period and first shown in the Whitechapel exhibition, 22.11.66 is archetypal of this key series. Gooding continues; 'John Hoyland's one-man exhibition at the Whitechapel in the spring of 1967 was a defining moment in British painting. In his early thirties, Hoyland had produced an astonishing body of work and had consolidated his reputation as one of the brightest stars in a brilliant constellation of younger British artists that included Bridget Riley, Patrick Caulfield and David Hockney.' (Op.Cit. p.55).
Saleroom notices
Please note that this work should be marked with a 'WT' symbol, please refer to the department for more information.
