‘One time I was one of the most extreme abstract painters. 1954, then I veered slightly.’
By 1973 Hilton was incapacitated - a physical and psychological debilitation brought on, in part, by alcoholism. Confined to his bed and unable to paint with oils, Hilton’s work underwent an abrupt change of style, defined by colourful figuration in gouache. It is this final body of work, born from the bed-ridden final years of the artist’s life, which will define S|2’s forthcoming show.
“You have to be pretty witty with poster paints, if they are not to become inert; the new paintings (started in December 1972) are almost pointillist in their complexity, to overcome the natural inertia of poster paints. I have reached a stage now of simplifying.”
Hilton’s late gouaches, endowed with an intoxicating sense of freedom and irresponsibility, immortalise his imperfect, intemperate response to the world. Sometimes bright and breezy, at other times dark and ominous, Hilton reserved the right to draw whatever observations he liked, whenever he wanted. An examination of this previously unknown cache of work reveals the artist’s preoccupations with mortality, as well as his attempts to re-visit his earlier abstract achievements and test them against his new simplicities of manner and technique.
Looking back on this time, Rose Hilton recalled: “It was during the last three years of his life that Roger created these strong, beautiful works, and also, I sensed, came to terms with some deeply spiritual convictions about death”. Hilton painted his last gouaches in early 1975, before passing away at home on 23 February, a month short of his 64th birthday.
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