John Hoyland, Memories of Rain

Born in Sheffield, John Hoyland (1934-2011) was a leading painter of his generation, renowned for his bold use of colour and inventive forms.

John Hoyland became well-known for his nonfigurative paintings during the 1960s. He believed painting had ‘the potential for the most advanced depth of feeling and meaning’ but he disliked the term ‘abstract’. He had a broad range of influences which he summarised as ‘swimming underwater, volcanoes, waterfalls, rocks, graffiti, stains, damp walls, cracked pavements, puddles, the cosmos inside the human body’.

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