1930-2014
Robyn Denny was a English painter born in October 1930 who was part of a movement of artists who contributed to transforming art in Britain in the 1950s. Around that time, the landscape-themed paintings coming out of the St Ives School were considered to be mainstream art and this group of young artists became motivated and inspired by Abstract Expressionism, as well as pop culture and urban modernity, to do something different.
Whilst studying at the Royal College in 1957, Denny made a series of paintings consisting of basic images of heads with dripped and dribbled paint inspired by the French style of abstract painting, Tachisme. This work was displayed with abstract collages and large paintings carrying the hallmarks of American abstract expressionism and exhibited in London in 1956 and 1959. In the 1970s, Denny’s style of painting changed again and was epitomised by his monochrome Moonshine drawings. Denny’s public art displayed at Embankment tube station is probably his most frequently viewed work, though many regard this as his most overlooked.
