Fifty years ago, in 1975, Roger Hilton, one of the pioneering British artists of the 20th Century, died of a stroke aged 64 near St Ives. The artist had been confined to his bed in Cornwall due to severe illness since 1973, and was slowly losing the use of his arms and legs. He started to play with the poster paints given to his son at Christmas 1972, and what resulted is a series of electric and explicit gouaches exploring art, sex, life, and death. Animals, birds, nudes, and boats are expressed with apparent abandon but with great control. Hilton, who was a Prisoner of War for three years from 1942, was a painter previously versed in abstraction, yet this exhibition shows his exploration of raw figuration in his final days. The series of gouaches only ended with Hilton’s death in February 1975. Vardaxoglou is pleased to present a group of previously unseen gouaches from this period from the Estate of Roger Hilton. The paintings Hilton produced in this period show the artist’s determination to make art in the face of imminent death.

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