Biography
To become one of the most influential British artists of his generation, Roger Hilton was born in Middlesex in 1911. Studying at the Slade under Henry Tonks, Roger went on to study in Paris before in his immediate post-war years, teaching in Dorset. Hilton moved to Cornwall in 1965 after spending much of the previous decade within the county. Roger Hilton became an intrinsic part of the Cornish/St Ives artist "colony". Focusing on abstraction, Hilton was to win the prestigious John Moores Painting Prize in 1963.
A troubled personal life, in large part due to the excesses of alcohol, Roger Hilton was to be regarded as a leading talent in the post-war British art movement, especially with his figurative abstraction.
Numerous significant exhibitions of his work have been held, including at the Tate. There is hardly a major public gallery within the UK that does not count within its collection a work by Hilton, including the aforementioned Tate, National Galleries of Scotland, National Gallery and the Fitzwilliam Gallery.
Roger Hilton died relatively young in 1975.