Fly Away John Hoyland

In the 1960s, Hoyland often flew to New York where he had a studio. Out of the artistic trends there, Color Field Painting and Post-Painterly Abstraction had a great appeal to him. The corroding techniques, the powerful acrylic colours, the importance of the material weight of the paint were not only characteristic of his paintings but also of his prints. The acquisition of the technique of etching in 1978 gave a boost to his graphic work. Since then, he shared his energies between painting and prints in London’s Kelpra Studios. It was a productive period in his painting, as he could experiment with floating forms, freer compositional ideas than earlier. His graphic works also reflect these new formal solutions, the brushwork and the stress on impasto. The possibility to shade with aquatint, the technique of brushed carborundum paste give the impression of depth and movement in the etching series of 1981. As compared with the traditionally indirect and linear character of graphic genres, these conspicuously colourful sheets suggest that Hoyland made use of improvisation, spontaneous discovery, light-handed freedom of creating colour combinations and formal equilibria.

Ferenc Tóth