For some years, Derek Hyatt was widely assumed to be one of those artists who grow old lamenting their few hours of youthful fame and promise and leave the rest of the world wondering where they went. That all changed in 2012, when his 80th birthday was celebrated with a large London exhibition at the Art Space Gallery in London, and he was recognised once more as a towering figure in contemporary British art.
One of the reasons for the period of disregard was that he was absent for some 20 years from the London art scene, and as a famous sculptor recently observed, “If you’re not in London, you might as well be in bloody Botswana.” There was also the little matter of changing