ROGER HILTON | September 1961

Galerie Charles Lienhard, Zurich
Sale, Sotheby's London, 10th March 1993, lot 218, where acquired by the present owner

London, Waddington Galleries, Hilton, April 1962, cat. no.11 (possibly).

The canvas is original. There are two small instances of loss in the upper left corner at the point at which the canvas stretches over the stretcher bar. There are one or two minor flecks of loss elsewhere. There is minor surface dirt throughout. This excepting the work appears to be in very good overall condition. Inspection under ultra violet light reveals no obvious signs of fluorescence or retouching. The work is held within a slip frame. Please telephone the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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September 1961 shares much in common with December 1960, which was sold in these rooms in November 2014 for what was then a world record auction price (£181,000) for the artist. They were both painted in the midst of an incredible burst of creativity, from 1956 to 1964, during which Roger Hilton established himself as one of the most exciting painters working both in Britain and in Europe. It was during these years that Hilton developed his aesthetic beyond a loose new-Plasticism, inspired by his friendship with the Dutch painter Constant, to something that was truly unique, a blend of control and wild abandon, measure and intuition. He also expanded his palette, from paintings that are dominated by white and black and a single (often primary) colour, to include a range of dirty, beautiful ochres, blue-greys, blood reds and rich yellows – that have both depth and strength, but also a certain restraint, which makes the work quietly powerful.  Here in September 1961 it is the ox-blood red-brown, thinly painted to reveal the ground underneath, that harmonises with the deep black lozenge below and gives the composition an essential warmth. Hilton’s abstraction is never intellectual or ethereal; it is always steeped in the world and, in particular, the body. To this end, colour allies with form. The rough, uneven shapes have an inevitable sense of the corporeal about them, a physicality and a weight. The forms within his paintings are always placed with a care that belies their seemingly spontaneous nature, always aware of the painting’s boundary; they press against each other and – importantly – the edges of the canvas. By the late 50s, Hilton’s surfaces, too, have become more complex, full of differing weights of mark-making, from heavy impasto to the lightly scratched. Drawing becomes an essential element to painting, charcoal lines interweaving the blocks of colour, so there is a play on the relative values within the work. This combination, of pure painting with unconscious drawing, is perhaps Hilton’s greatest innovation in these years and all of this can be seen perfectly in September 1961.

The present work was painted in the months following Hilton’s successful exhibition at Galerie Charles Lienhard in Zurich, at the time a very important conduit for British abstract painters in reaching an appreciative European audience. The introduction to the Lienhard catalogue was written by the art historian and curator Alan Bowness, a key supporter of Hilton, Heron, Lanyon and Wynter. With a characteristic generosity, Bowness, having made it clear how highly he rated Hilton’s work, in an international context, kept his essay relatively short, instead giving the floor to the artist’s own statements. Hilton was never a prolific painter, with many hours spent in the studio staring at his canvasses, working out the next move, and this can be seen in his writing, in which his natural wit and humour is constantly shot-through with a deadly seriousness. 

Under a heading ‘Art as an Instrument of Truth’, Hilton writes:  ‘at heart everyone knows that beneath the everyday appearance of things are hidden truths which intuition alone can grasp. Today, when everything is put in question, man is trying again to orientate himself, to give himself a direction, to re-establish laws based on absolute truths. In crucial moments in the history of man such as we are living through there is no excuse for fooling around. I see art as an instrument of truth or nothing’ (Roger Hilton quoted in Andrew Lambirth, Roger Hilton, Thames & Hudson, 2004, p.160).