Roger Hilton CBE (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, Patrick Heron, Peter Lanyon & Bryan Wynter – he spent much of his career in London, where his work was deeply influenced by European avant-garde movements such as tachisme 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, Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, FRCS (9 April 1862 – 8 January 1937) was a British surgeon and later draughtsman and painter of figure subjects, chiefly interiors, and a Caricature, caricaturist. He became an influentia ...

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 in 1942. He worked as a schoolteacher at Bryanston School, 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. In 1964 he exhibited at the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 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 the continued drinking of alcohol despite it causing problems. Some definitions require evidence of dependence and withdrawal. Problematic use of alcohol has been mentioned in the earliest historical records. The World He ...

. His work became less abstract in his later years, often being based on the nude or images of animals. He died at Botallack, not far from St Ives, in 1975.

Selected exhibitions

1952 Gimpel Fils, London 1958 Institute of Contemporary Arts, London 1960 Waddington Galleries, London 1961 Galerie Charles Lienhard, Zurich 1962 Waddington Galleries, London 1963 John Moores Exhibition, Liverpool (1st Prize) 1964 XXXII Venice Biennale (UNESCO Prize) 1974 Serpentine Gallery, London (retrospective) 1977 Waddington Galleries, London 1993 Hayward Gallery, London (retrospective) 2006 Tate Gallery, 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 John Moores Painting Prize winners

Selected exhibitions

Representation in public collections

See also

References

External links