Roger Hilton CBE

Roger Hilton CBE (1911–1975) was one of the leading figures in post-war British abstraction. His work moved continually between abstraction and figuration, combining bold colour, simplified forms and an instinctive approach to composition with recurring references to landscape, the human figure and the natural world.

Born in Northwood, Middlesex, Hilton studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, where he won the Orpen Prize in 1930, before spending much of the 1930s in Paris. During the Second World War he served in the army and was a prisoner of war from 1942 to 1945. After the war he resumed painting and by the early 1950s had begun to work increasingly in an abstract language.

Hilton’s most rigorously abstract period came in the early to mid-1950s. His friendship with the Dutch artist Constant and his encounter with the work of Piet Mondrian were particularly significant, while his paintings also reflected his interest in contemporary European abstraction. Works from this period are often built from a small number of irregular shapes, with colour and empty space carrying equal structural weight.

From the later 1950s Hilton spent increasing amounts of time in Cornwall and became closely associated with the artists of St Ives. Landscape and figurative motifs began to re-enter his work, often emerging through the process of painting rather than through direct description. His paintings of the late 1950s and 1960s frequently occupy the territory between abstraction and representation, with references to the sea, landscape and the female figure becoming increasingly prominent. He settled permanently in Cornwall in 1965.

In 1963 Hilton won the John Moores Painting Prize, and the following year represented Britain at the Venice Biennale, where he was awarded the UNESCO Prize. He was appointed CBE in 1968.

During the final years of his life, declining health increasingly confined Hilton to bed, but he continued to work with remarkable energy. Using gouache, poster paint, charcoal and inexpensive brushes, he produced a large body of works on paper in which animals, boats, figures and vegetation appear in a direct, exuberant and highly simplified visual language. These late works form one of the most distinctive phases of his career.

Major retrospectives of Hilton’s work have been held at the Serpentine Gallery in 1974, the Hayward Gallery in 1993 and Tate St Ives in 2006. His work is held in major public collections including Tate, the National Galleries of Scotland, the Government Art Collection, The Hepworth Wakefield, the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon.

The Estate of Roger Hilton is represented by The Redfern Gallery.