Oi Yoi Yoi 1963
Tate © Roger Hilton. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2002
view in Tate Collection
This exhibition of drawings and paintings by British artist Roger Hilton (1911-75) brings together his bold abstract works of the early 50s with paintings from the 1960s onwards, portraying figures and landscapes.
Hilton's use of rich colour and texture, evoking the rhythms of natural phenomena led to an affinity with the St Ives modernists. His frequent visits to the town from the late 1950s no doubt underpinned his departure from abstraction and the landscape associations in his work at that time.
Throughout his mature career Hilton had been concerned with the way forward for modern painting and with the tension between abstraction and figuration. Hilton's colourful dynamic images of women successfully bridged the gap between abstraction and figuration and also between images of the figure and the landscape.
Photo © Tate 2006