Derek Horton points to the “eccentric humour” permeating John Hyatt’s art. This was certainly visible in his painting from the beginning.
Early in his career, two of his paintings were selected for the Arts Council touring exhibition The British Art Show: Old Allegiances and New Directions 1979-1984.
One of the show’s selectors, Jon Thompson, noted that John employed “… a kind of ‘punning’ pictorialisation in which literary devices are used to radicalise the image, and images are used to disrupt the logical flow of written language”.
Indeed, John’s large painting, Art, Wars, Division and Design, which epitomised this delight in the interplay of image and word, was used on the catalogue’s cover as a pointer to the exhibition’s concerns.