Robyn Denny (1930-2014) was a hugely influential figure in the history of post-war British art. He formed part of the artists who transformed British art in the late 1950s and led it into the international mainstream. Denny was highly interested in Abstract Expressionism, American films, popular culture, and urban modernity. Colour and form had shaped his work from the early 60s and continued to do so throughout the artist's career. His concern for strong, structural forms was evident even in his early works.
Read MoreDenny studied at the Royal College of Art (1954-1957) where after graduating, he received a scholarship to study in Italy, then taught part-time at Hammersmith School of Art, the Slade School of Art and the Bath Academy of Art, Corsham. Some of his earliest works created at the Royal College are rudimentary portrayals of heads, echoing French Tachisme and the artist's initial expression in abstract art. Alongside these works in the timeline of Denny's artistic production are abstract collages and large gestural paintings which reveal the broad gestures and bold marks of American Abstract Expressionism, a movement very much influential for the London art scene in the late 1950s. Throughout his time at the RCA, Denny took part in the Young Contemporaries (1953-1957) shows at the RBA Galleries. Denny achieved immediate acclaim after his graduation, with the 1957 Young Contemporaries show 'putting him on the map', as Denny recalls, resulting in several offers of exhibitions and public art commissions. The first public art work Denny created was a mosaic mural for the Abbey Wood Primary School in 1959, while simultaneously, he was working on a commissioned mural for outfitter Austin Reed. Even though the Austin Reed mural was located in the basement of the store, it quickly became an attraction, catching the attention of the Beatles, who chose to be photographed in front of it in 1963.
A number of solo exhibitions followed in the 60s and by the middle of the decade Denny was established in the forefront of British contemporary painting. Within the span of six years (1964-1970), Denny held four solo exhibitions at Kasmin Gallery in London and solo exhibitions at Elkon Gallery in New York in 1966, 1967 and 1970. The paintings produced in the 60s include some of the most celebrated works, such as Candy (1961) now in the Tate Collection, and arguably the most recognizable style associated with Denny. Denny investigated the 'dominant vertical' in a structurally austere, yet in a manner of intimate play, a theme prominent in this decade of work and inseparable from his preoccupation with the human figure.
In the series of works developed in the late 60s and early 70s, Denny worked on a very large scale, continuing to explore the relationships between the different spaces of the viewer and the canvas. In 1973, Tate Gallery held a retrospective of Denny's works, making him the youngest artist at the time to have a solo retrospective at Tate. His retrospective consisted of paintings, prints and drawings, many of which had not been previously shown in London. Robyn Denny also represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1966, along with Anthony Caro, Bernard and Harold Cohen and Richard Smith, a selection that confirmed his prominence and the international relevance that British non-figurative art had by then achieved. Denny's contribution to the British Pavilion was apt, as the paintings chosen seemed to extrapolate the definition of space that was introduced in Venice, eight years earlier by the connection between Rothko and Tintoretto. The transition between real and imaginary space, a theme found across Denny's practice, was ever-present in his works at the 1966 Biennale. These works also marked a turning point in his work. The were less austere than earlier works, shifted from narrow lines to broad bands and lighter colour, closely connected with daylight.
The United States and Denny's American counterparts played an important role in the development of his career as well as his personal style. In 1969, Denny organised an exhibition for the Art Council on the American artist Charles Biederman, whose work on vividly coloured abstract reliefs seems to have influenced Denny towards a shift in his colour palette to bright colour contrasts, which up to that point had mostly consisted of dark, harmonious tones. Ten years later, in 1981, Denny relocated to Los Angeles and had his fourth solo show with Bernard Jacobson in LA. Even though Denny remained in LA for about five years, returning to England in 1986, his paintings radically changed during his time in the US. In 1985, the artist created a public art work of coloured lines for the Embankment tube station in London. Robyn Denny's work was also part of the 1993 exhibition of the Barbican Art Gallery titled The Sixties Art Scene in London. From the 1990s until his death in 2014, back in London, Denny worked intensely on groups of monumental canvases and works on paper, many of which have never been exhibited before.
Text courtesy Vardaxoglou Gallery.
