Best known for his hardedged abstract paintings, Robyn Denny belongs to the generation of British artists who, in the late 1950s, broke with the art of the preceding era by engaging more directly with Britain's newly restless, increasingly affluent and rapidly changing culture.

This display focuses on the earliest phase of Denny’s career when, after leaving the Royal College of Art (1954-57), he was part of a small radical group that developed an art concerned with the world of mass communication and the contemporary urban environment.

Highly experimental, Denny’s works from 1957 to 1960 incorporate elements of daily life such as newsprint and magazine pages, layering and obscuring letters and numerals. By appropriating and recontextualising this seemingly commonplace urban material, Denny investigates the impact of everyday signs and symbols on human perception and communication.

Towards the end of this period Denny abandoned collage in favour of simple geometric paintings that address fundamental issues of space, scale and the human environment.

This display has been devised by curator Helen Little

BP British Art Displays 1500-2009