Roger Hilton

CBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

(1911–1975) was a pioneer of abstract art in post-Second World War Britain. Often associated with the 'middle generation' of St Ives painters –

Terry Frost Sir Terence Ernest Manitou Frost RA (13 October 1915 – 1 September 2003) was a British abstract artist, who worked in Newlyn, Cornwall. Frost was renowned for his use of the Cornish light, colour and shape to start a new art movement in ...

Patrick Heron Patrick Heron (30 January 1920 – 20 March 1999) was a British abstract and figurative artist, critic, writer, and polemicist, who lived in Zennor, Cornwall. Heron was recognised as one of the leading painters of his generation. Influenced b ...

Peter Lanyon George Peter Lanyon (8 February 1918 – 31 August 1964) was a British painter of landscapes leaning heavily towards abstraction. Lanyon was one of the most important artists to emerge in post-war Britain. Despite his early death at the ag ...

& Bryan Wynter – he spent much of his career in London, where his work was deeply influenced by European avante-garde movements such as

tachisme __NOTOC__ Tachisme (alternative spelling: Tachism, derived from the French word ''tache'', stain) is a French style of abstract painting popular in the 1940s and 1950s. The term is said to have been first used with regards to the movement in 19 ...

and CoBrA. He was born on 23 March 1911 in Northwood, Middlesex, and studied at the

Slade School of Fine Art The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as ...

under

Henry Tonks Henry Tonks, FRCS (9 April 1862 – 8 January 1937) was a British surgeon and later draughtsman and painter of figure subjects, chiefly interiors, and a caricaturist. He became an influential art teacher. He was one of the first British arti ...

and also in Paris, where he developed links with painters on the Continent. At the Slade he won the Orpen prize in 1930. He was born Roger Hildesheim and his parents changed the name to Hilton in 1916, when anti-German feeling was prevalent. In the Second World War, he served in the Army, part of the time as a Commando, for about three years being a prisoner of war after the

Dieppe raid Operation Jubilee or the Dieppe Raid (19 August 1942) was an Allied amphibious attack on the German-occupied port of Dieppe in northern France, during the Second World War. Over 6,050 infantry, predominantly Canadian, supported by a regiment o ...

in 1942. He worked as a schoolteacher at

Bryanston School Bryanston School is a public school (English independent day and boarding school for pupils aged 13–18) located next to the village of Bryanston, and near the town of Blandford Forum, in Dorset in South West England. It was founded in 1928 ...

, Dorset, from 1947 to 1948, and later taught at Central School of Arts and Crafts, 1954–56. During the late 1950s and 1960s, Hilton's career began to take off and he started to spend more time in west Cornwall, moving there permanently in 1965. In the same year he married Rose Phipps, 20 years his junior, having divorced his first wife, Ruth David. He became a prominent member of the St. Ives School and gained an international reputation. He won the 1963

John Moores Painting Prize The John Moores Painting Prize is a biennial award to the best contemporary painting, submission is open to the public. The prize is named for Sir John Moores, noted philanthropist, who established the award in 1957. The winning work and short-li ...

. In 1964 he exhibited at the British Pavilion at the

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...

winning the UNESCO Prize. Hilton was appointed CBE in 1968. By 1974, he was confined to bed as an invalid precipitated in part by

alcoholism Alcoholism is, broadly, any drinking of alcohol (drug), alcohol that results in significant Mental health, mental or physical health problems. Because there is disagreement on the definition of the word ''alcoholism'', it is not a recognize ...

. His work became less abstract in his later years, often being based on the nude or images of animals. He died at

Botallack Botallack ( kw, Bostalek, meaning "Talek's dwelling") is a village in west Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It lies along the B3306 road which connects St Ives in the east to the A30 road, near Land's End. The village is included in the St ...

, not far from St Ives, in 1975.

Selected exhibitions

1952 Gimpel Fils, London 1958 Institute of Contemporary Arts, London 1960

Waddington Galleries Waddington Custot is a London-based art gallery specialising in modern and contemporary art. Formerly known as Waddington Galleries, it has been situated on Mayfair's Cork Street since 1958. History Waddington Galleries was founded on Cork ...

, London 1961 Galerie Charles Lienhard, Zurich 1962

, London 1963 John Moores Exhibition, Liverpool (1st Prize) 1964 XXXII

(UNESCO Prize) 1974

Serpentine Gallery The Serpentine Galleries are two contemporary art galleries in Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, Central London. Recently rebranded to just Serpentine, the organisation is split across Serpentine South, previously known as the Serpentine Gallery, ...

, London (retrospective) 1977

, London !993 Haywood Gallery, London (retrospective) 2006

Tate Gallery Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...

, St. Ives 2008 Kettles Yard, Cambridge

Representation in public collections

Arts Council Collection, London British Council Collection British Museum, London Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon Fogg Art Museum, Harvard Government Art Collection National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa National Portrait Gallery, London Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam Tate Gallery, London Victoria & Albert Museum Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Hilton, Roger 1911 births 1975 deaths People educated at Bishop's Stortford College 20th-century English painters English male painters St Ives artists Alumni of the Slade School of Fine Art Commanders of the Order of the British Empire 20th-century English male artists

Selected exhibitions

Representation in public collections

See also

References

External links