Robyn Denny | Portraits (Series B), III, 1973

Robyn Denny | Portraits (Series B), III, 1973
Lithograph
31 1/10 × 22 4/5 in
79 × 58 cm
Signed and numbered by the artist
Edition of 30 + 10 artist’s proofs

Robyn Denny

Edward Maurice FitzGerald “Robyn” Denny (3 October 1930 – 20 May 2014) was one of a group of young artists who transformed British art in the late 1950s, leading it into the international mainstream. Reacting against the mainstream St Ives School of landscape-based painting and inspired by Abstract Expressionism, American films, popular culture and urban modernity, they saw abstract painting as their only conceivable route. National Galleries of Scotland.

Robyn Denny | Portraits (Series B), III, 1973

In reaction to the painterly, gestural aspects of 1950s Abstract Expressionism, a number of painters working in the early 1960s became interested in structures, systems and methods of notation. Such codes were a feature of sixties culture, influenced by new developments in science and technology. Robyn Denny was inspired by such developments. His art has been linked to aspects of 1960s culture such as the tower block, electronics and diagrams, and also to the fascination with systems of communication. Using the same basic grid structure, Denny varied colour and form to produce subtly different effects. National Galleries of Scotland.

Denny’s first major career break-through occurred when he was commissioned to complete the public art project Austin Reed mural in Regent Street. From 1950-1954 Denny studied at St Martin’s School of Art in London, after which he attended the Royal College of Art in 1957, going on to win a scholarship to study in Italy. His first solo exhibition took place at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, 1959. Denny went on to exhibit at the RBA Galleries in 1960, and at the Walker Art Gallery exhibition titled London: The New Scene at Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, which went on to complete a North American Tour in 1965. Denny was the subject of a Tate Gallery retrospective in 1973, and exhibited at the Barbican Art Gallery’s The Sixties Art Scene in London in 1993. Denny is collected world wide, including at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; The British Council, UK; The Veranneman Foundation, Kruishoutem; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the Walker Art Gallery, UK; the Tate Gallery, London; the Daimler Chrysler Collection, Berlin; the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Peter Stuyvesant Collection, Amsterdam.