john hubbard

John Hubbard lives and works in Chilcombe, Dorset.

Personal website www.johnhubbard.com
Marlborough Gallery, London
Tate Collection
Sladers Yard Gallery, West Bay

Born in Connecticut in 1931, John Hubbard was educated at Harvard University. He then completed three years of military service, based in Japan. Following his return to the USA in 1956, Hubbard studied at the Art Students League of New York and with the Abstract Expressionist painter Hans Hoffman. He then moved to Rome, painted in Italy and travelled across Europe. In 1961, Hubbard married and settled near Bridport in Dorset.

A visiting teacher at Camberwell School of Art in London from 1963 to 1965, Hubbard started to design and paint for various ballet companies in the late 1960s. Amongst the most noteworthy of his stage designs are the costumes and décor for Le Baiser de la Fee for the Dutch National Ballet in Amsterdam in 1968, the costumes and décor for Midsummer for the Royal Ballet in London in 1983, and the back-cloth for Sylvia for the Royal Ballet in London in 1985. A guest artist at the National Gallery of Malaysia in 1990, he also designed a series of batik hangings, still on display in Kuala Lumpur. At the same time, Hubbard also increasingly showed in group and solo exhibitions in Britain and abroad. In 1985, he showed in a major solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford and, in 1986, in another major solo exhibition at the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut. Awarded the Jerwood Prize in 1996, Hubbard was invited to exhibit Eight Variations on a Drawing by Rubens at the Fitzwilliam Museum in 1998. His work can be seen in prominent public collections such as the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Fitzwilliam Museum, the National Gallery of Malaysia, the National Gallery of Victoria, the Philadelphia Museum of Fine Arts, the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, the Tate Gallery and the Yale Centre of British Art.