Roger Hilton

The limited edition, Untitled, 1970/2006, was produced to coincide with Into Seeing New: Roger Hilton at Tate St Ives, 7 October 2006 – 21 January 2007. The exhibition of drawings and paintings by Roger Hilton celebrated his early abstract works and his return to 'reinvent figuration' through his colourful dynamic images of women. This limited edition etching was created using an original drawing by Roger Hilton from 1970 with guidance and permission of the Hilton estate. It is signed and numbered on the back by Rose Hilton, spouse of the artist.

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• Artist Roger Hilton
• Artwork Untitled
• Dimensions 26 x 19 cm
• Material Etching on paper
• Edition 104 of 200
• Date of work 1970/2006

Roger Hilton CBE (1911 – 1975, Middlesex, UK), painted his first abstract work in 1950 and by 1952 he was constructing bold designs of irregular shapes in strong colours where affinities lay with art informel and his friend, the Dutch artist Constant. The influence of Piet Mondrian’s work is also evident by the mid 1950s, in the colour schemes of white, black and red that he briefly adopted in paintings. Hilton’s association with the St Ives artists, consolidated by his frequent visits to that town from the late 1950s underpinned the landscape associations in his work at that time.

Inspired by contemporary European post-war abstract trends, Hilton's figurative paintings became more concerned with the act of painting and increasingly abstract. His use of rich colour and texture evoking the rhythms of natural phenomena led to an affinity and association with the modernists working in St Ives from the mid-1950s. By the end of the decade Hilton returned to 'reinvent figuration', demonstrating not only his frustration with the limitations of abstract painting and rejection of American Abstract Expressionism in favour of the European tradition, but also his discovery that images could be generated from the process of painting itself. Hilton's paintings of women successfully bridged the gap between abstraction and figuration and also between images of the figure and the landscape.

Major retrospectives of Hilton's work have been held at Serpentine Gallery (1974), Hayward Gallery (1993) and Tate St Ives (2006). He was awarded the John Moore's prize in 1963, and he represented the UK at the Venice Biennale in 1964 when he was awarded the UNESCO prize. His work is represented in major museum collections throughout the world, including the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, Hepworth Wakefield, the National Gallery of Scotland, the Government Art Collection and Tate.