Press |  1990s  | 

‘Cool dude struts with his holster full of colours’ by John McEwen

It has been a long time coming, but ‘John Hoyland’ at the Royal Academy (until October 31; supported by Donald and Jeanne Kahn) is well worth the wait. To reduce the 40-year career of our most flamboyant non-figurative painter – he insists on ‘non-figurative’ in preference to ‘abstract’ – to 22 …

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Press |  1990s  | 

‘Walking the plank’ by Gordon Burn

John Hoyland harks back to a time when painters were action men, and painting was king. Gordon Burn finds that the forgotten revolutionary of British art is pretty salty about his peers – and braced for a kicking when his own work goes on show next week. ‘Solitary studio practice’ …

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Press |  1990s  | 

‘Mastery in living colour’ by Charles Hall

Charles Hall finds a dazzling new freedom in the work of one of England’s leading abstract painters. John Hoyland has always been a virtuoso painter, but the paintings in his new ‘Bali’ series look more daring and assured than anything he has previously attempted: his sugary, metallic, unashamedly synthetic palette …

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Press |  1990s  | 

‘Landscapes of the mind’ by William Feaver

A recent spell in Bali has affected John Hoyland, prompting violent clashes and disturbances, a use of acrylics that mocks the controlled slippages and seepages of younger generation abstract painters. His paintings, at Theo Waddington, look astonishingly off-hand. Thick ejaculations hit tropic-nocturnal stained grounds. These in turn host squiggles of …

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Press |  1990s  | 

‘The finally inexplicable’ by Bryan Robertson

John Hoyland’s latest paintings are not being exhibited by any gallery, to the disappointment of the critic Bryan Robertson who believes them to be among his best. Here Robertson, the curator of two previous Hoyland shows, questions the artist about the new work and his development as an abstract painter …

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