John Hubbard was born in Connecticut in 1931. Before pursuing art, he read English at Harvard University following which he completed three years of military service in Japan during the Korean War. Upon his return, Hubbard studied at the Art Students League of New York, like many pivoting creatives of his time, including Calder and Judd, to name but two others. Hubbard’s teachers there included hugely influential abstract expressionist painter Hans Hoffman, while names such as Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler, Robert De Niro Sr., Ray Eames and Jackson Pollock shared classes and benches with him. Later in his career, Hubbard would don the teacher’s cap at Camberwell School of Art (1963–1965).
Modernity at the time being incarnated by European breakthroughs, Hubbard moved to Rome after graduating from the League. His time there was spent travelling, painting and eating. From Italy, Hubbard moved to England, which he first visited in 1958, and where he would eventually settle, in Dorset. Like many artists of his generation, Hubbard’s initial landing point was the St Ives artists’ colony and the region’s irresistible landscape. As a genre, landscape would feature prominently in Hubbard’s corpus going forward, a genre he approached in a unique way, favouring particular experiences over particular places.
During the 1960s, Hubbard collaborated with the theatre world, working as a costume and set designer for various ballet companies such as ‘Le Baiser de la fée’ by the Dutch National Ballet in Amsterdam in 1968, the costumes and décor for ‘Midsummer’ by the Royal Ballet in London in 1983, and work for ‘Sylvia’ by the Royal Ballet in London in 1985. He was also a guest artist for the National Gallery of Malaysia in 1990.
In parallel, his local reputation grew in the UK, materialising in many show opportunities and appearances: New Art Centre, London (1960–1961, 1963, 1965, 1967, 1969–1975), University of Leicester (1964), St Catherine’s College, Oxford (1966), Aberdeen Art Gallery, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (both 1975), Newlyn Gallery (1978), Fischer Fine Art, London (1979 and 1984). His success was rewarded with a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford in 1985 and with a major retrospective at the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut in 1986.
The 1990s and 2000s, following exponential interest in Hubbard’s work, were punctuated with numerous public commissions. An installation for the entry hall to the headquarters of Smith & Nephew in London (1995), Dorchester Hospital (1990), Charleston Farmhouse, Sussex (1995), Rothschild Collection, Waddesdon Manor (2000), Said Business School, Oxford (2005), and Royal Parks, London (2008).
Hubbard passed away in 2017.
