Robyn Denny

Graffiti 20

1977

Denny was born in Abinger, Surrey in 1930. He studied at the Royal College of Art in the mid-1950s, where he was inspired by Abstract Expressionism, American film, popular culture and urban modernity. He recognised abstract painting as the medium most suited to his message and his time, and emerged as a force to be reckoned with within abstract art in the 1950s-1970s. 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.