John Hoyland - From Painting to Print

5th of Sept - 27th September

The history of Hoyland's printmaking unfolds as a visual journal, recording the compositional invention of a painting career spanning five decades. Printmaking for the artist is a natural extension of his creative impulse – for example Picasso, Nolde, Matisse and many of the great Modern masters utilised the processes of printing to investigate the formal language of art.

Hoyland’s printing career started in earnest with the emergence of British Abstract Expressionism in the 1960's. He embraced this new spirit in painting, traveling to New York to visit many of his American counterparts, including Rothko and Motherwell. It was here also that he produced his first series of lithographs. Back in London, his studio printing gained momentum under the guidance of Chris Prater at Kelpra Press, a young publishing company that acted as a catalyst for many up and coming artists of this intensely creative period. It was at Kelpra that Hoyland worked on a set of 'sugar aquatints', a process invented by Picasso, the first of its kind to come out of a British print studio. These innovations were indicative of developments characterised by this new breed of publisher who saw print as a way to take advantage of this creative zeitgeist.

Unlike some of his contemporaries that produced prints as a means of replicating a painting for a commercial market, Hoyland believes that a print is a result of thinking about what a print can be - the last thing he wants is substitute paintings. He relishes the active involvement in the studio and the close collaboration with an experienced technician - for example Chris Betambeau was inspirational when he produced the screen prints of the 1990’s. The experimental techniques that Hoyland has developed in printmaking during a forty year period have allowed him to achieve something of the intensity, energy and saturation of his painting without imitation. The drawback of working in these studios was the high expectations levied at the artist. John remarks that 'there were always the men in white smocks waiting on a Monday morning for you to be a genius!’ This pressure, coupled with time constraints and financial investment, created a heated and artificial setup - 'I was always envious of Motherwell in New York, owning his own press and printer, surrounded by his paintings and having the time to experiment'. However when you consider Hoyland’s enigmatic prints, with their quality and invention, perhaps it was the environment, with creative dialogue and intense day long proofing, that actually focused the mind.

As an artist that has printed worldwide in Milan, Zurich, New York and Paris, Hoyland jokes that 'when you make prints in England you are in for a lousy lunch!' However, it was in London that he managed to create some of the most successful series of prints in his portfolio. We hope this exhibition at the gallery encapsulates the power and invention of his print oeuvre and re-confirms the huge contribution Hoyland has made to the British art scene since 1960. His unswerving exploration of the formal language of paint in alliance with wit and intelligence make him one of the pivotal painters in the contemporary art world. This small retrospective at the gallery should accompany a significant retrospective at one of the major contemporary London museums.