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.

Early life He was born in Abinger, Surrey, the third son of The Rev. Sir Henry Denny, 7th Baronet, a clergyman, and his wife Joan, whose family name was also Denny. He was educated at Clayesmore School, Dorset. 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.

Among the paintings Denny created at the Royal College are rudimentary images of heads, indebted to French Tachisme, with dripped and dribbled paint. 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. In 1969, he organised an exhibition for the Arts Council on the American artist Charles Biederman, who for over 20 years worked exclusively on vividly coloured abstract reliefs. This experience coincided with a new intensity of colour in Denny's work, shifting from rich, dark harmonies to high, bright contrasts, from a sense of twilight to daylight. In 1981 Denny moved to Los Angeles, but he returned to London in 1986.

Exhibitions 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 Tate Gallery retrospective (1973 The Sixties Art Scene in London (Barbican Art Gallery, London, 1993)

Personal life Robyn Denny married the British watercolour artist Anna Teasdale, whom he met at St Martin's School of Art, in 1953. The couple had two children, Dominic and Lucy. The marriage was dissolved in 1975.