1950s
From 1950 to 1954 he studied in Paris and at St Martin’s School of Art, London, followed by two years National Service in the Royal Navy. After graduating from the Royal College in 1957 he was awarded 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. An active and distinguished career included participation in ground-breaking exhibitions throughout Europe and the United States. Denny also had a retrospective at the Tate Gallery (1973); ‘Place’ (Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 1959); ‘Situation’ (RBA Galleries, London, 1960); ‘London: the New Scene’ (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, Minneapolis and North American tour, 1965); Venice Biennale, 1966 and ‘The Sixties Art Scene in London’ (Barbican Art Gallery, London, 1993). In 1981 Denny moved to Los Angeles, but then returned to London in the 1990s. In California he found a congenial urban environment and a natural light, including the notorious smog, that captivated him and enabled him to develop a new aesthetic.
Among the paintings that Denny created at the Royal College are rudimentary images of heads, indebted to French Tachisme, with dripped and dribbled paint and an occasional discreet patch of fashionable burnt bitumen. These were interspersed with abstract collages and large gestural paintings which display the broad gestures and bold marks of American Abstract Expressionism, exhibited in London in 1956 and 1959. Other works, like Denny’s early murals, contain vestiges of letters and numerals, in an echo of contemporary French lettriste painting. In 1959 the deceptively simple canvases that he showed in the ‘Place’ exhibition had, like other works made at this time, a horizontal band at their base. Set directly on the floor, unframed, they invited the viewer to cross a rudimentary threshold, acknowledging the corporeal presence of a viewing body without offering any concessions to illusion.
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