Derek Hyatt 1931-2015

Derek Hyatt was born in Ilkley, Yorkshire in 1931. He studied at Leeds College of Art (1948 - 1952), then the Royal College of Art (1954 - 1958) where he was awarded the Royal Scholar prize in 1955 and the J. Andrew Lloyd Scholarship for Landscape Painting in 1958. While at the RCA he edited Ark Magazine (issues 21, 22 and 23 - Winter 1957 to Autumn 1958), his issue on colour symbolism selling 3,000 copies in three days.

Alex Seago writes in his book ‘Burning the Box of Beautiful Things: The Development of a Postmodern Sensibility’ (p40, Clarendon Press, 1995) that ‘Feeling that ARK had paid more than enough attention to pop Americana, Hyatt focused on romanticism and landscape painting. Eastern art (with a particularly distinguished layout by art editor David Varley), Dadaism and Art Autre, featuring articles on Schwitters and Dubuffet. Issue 23 also contained the first article to appear in Britain about Frank Auerbach, recently graduated from the Painting School’

Between 1954 and 1964 Hyatt was visiting lecturer at Kingston College of Art. In 1964 he returned to his beloved Yorkshire and was a lecturer at Leeds College of Art from 1964 to 1968, then senior lecturer until 1984. Hyatt was made a Companion of the Guild of St George in 1990.

His paintings and drawings feature in the public and corporate collections of major institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Contemporary Art Society, London, the Universities of Leeds, Oxford, Harvard and Yale, the Nuffield Foundation - a charitable trust established in 1943 by William Morris (Lord Nuffield), founder of Morris Motors, as well as the De Beers Collection

In 1993, the art critic Peter Fuller described Derek Hyatt in Modern Painters magazine as ‘one of the most important painters of landscape in Britain’ (Reflections on Modern Art, Modern Painters magazine) which is something Hyatt’s major 2001 retrospective Meetings on the Moor at the Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, Bradford, further acknowledged.

Derek Hyatt died on 8th December 2015, aged 84.

Selected Exhibitions

1960 - 57 Gallery, Edinburgh
1960 to 1966 - A series at the New Art Centre, London, University of York and Manor House, Iikley
1963 - Lane Gallery, Bradford
1964 - Thames Gallery, Windsor
1965 - Queens Square Gallery, Leeds
1966 - University of York
1966 - Manor House, Ilkley
1966 - Arthur Gallery, Tampa, Florida, USA
1967 - Lane Gallery, Bradford
1967 to 1971 - Goosewell Gallery, Menston
1967 to 1976 - Waddington Gallery, London
1969 - Scottish Galery, Edinburgh
1970 - Compass Gallery, Glasgow
1975 - Waddington Gallery, London
1977 - Waddington and Tooth’s Gallery, London
1989 - Austin Desmond Fine Art, London
1989 - Ruskin Gallery, Sheffield
1991 to 1992 - Dean Clough Contemporary Art Gallery, Halifax
1993 - Clouds Over the Moor, Art Space Gallery, London
2001 - Meetings on the Moor - Retrospective at Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, Bradford
2004 - Derek Hyatt: Circle on the Dark Rock - Shire Pottery Gallery and Studios, Alnwick
2005 - Meetings on the Moor - Dean Clough Contemporary Art Gallery, Halifax
2012 - Meetings on the Moor: The Bishopdale Paintings, Art Space Gallery, London
2014 - Time Glides in Secret, Michael Richardson Contemporary Art, London

Selected Bibliography

1993 - Derek Hyatt 'I Draw My Think', Modern Painters, Vol.6, No.2 (pp.106–108)
1993 - Peter Fuller ‘Reflections on Modern Art’ Modern Painters, Winter Edition
1995 - Linda Saunders 'Close Encounters on the Moors' Modern Painters, Autumn Edition, Vol.8, No.3
1995 - Derek Hyatt 'To Strengthen the Tribe', Modern Painters, Autumn Edition, Vol.8, No.3
1996 - Derek Hyatt 'What is Real?', Modern Painters, Spring Edition (pp.106–107)
2001 - T Barrington 'Derek Hyatt at Seventy' Modern Painters 2001, Vol 14; Part 1, p.119
2002 - Derek Hyatt & Peter Woodcock 'Stone Fires - Liquid Clouds, The Shamanic Art of Derek Hyatt', Gothic Image Publications.