Abstract composition

Few paintings have survived from Hoyland's four years at the RA Schools, (1956-1960). In his early years as an art student Hoyland was still experimenting with Sheffield landscapes and abstract-figuration influenced by Nicholas de Stael. By around 1958 his work made the transition to pure abstraction, a shift that may register the recent influence (personal, not stylistic) of William Turnbull. The careful construction, block by geometric block, of the Sheffield townscapes and odd-shapes of his still-lives are replaced by a purely arbitrary placement of soft-edged irregular colour forms relating ambiguously to an atmospheric field of brilliant colour. There is no subject but colour and form, light and space; the relation between components is entirely intrinsic and non-referential. (see M. Gooding, John Hoyland, London, 2006, p. 17 and 23).