- Source: Ivon Hitchens
Ivon Hitchens (born London, 3 March 1893 – 29 August 1979) was an English painter who started exhibiting during the 1920s. He became part of the 'London Group' of artists and exhibited with them during the 1930s. His house was bombed in 1940 during World War II. Hitchens and his family abandoned London for the Sussex countryside, where he acquired a small area of woodland on Lavington Common (near Petworth), and lived there in a caravan, which he gradually augmented with a series of buildings. It was here that the artist further developed his fascination with the woodland subject matter, and this pre-occupation continued until the artist's death in 1979.
Hitchens is particularly well known for panoramic landscape paintings created from blocks of colour. There is a huge mural by him in the main hall of Cecil Sharp House. His work was exhibited in the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1956.
Hitchens was the son of the artist Alfred Hitchens. His son John Hitchens and grandson Simon Hitchens are both artists.
Exhibitions
1925 One-man exhibition, Mayor Gallery, London
1928 Arthur Tooth & Sons, London
1929 London Artists' Association, Cooling Galleries, London
1930 Heal's Mansard Gallery, London
1933 Alex Reid & Lefevre, London (also 1935 and 1937)
1934 Participated in Objective Abstractions, Zwemmer Gallery
1937 Storran Gallery exhibition
1940 First of ten one-man exhibitions, Leicester Galleries (also in 1942, 1944, 1947, 1949, 1950, 1952, 1954, 1957 and 1959)
1945 Retrospective exhibition, Temple Newsam House, Leeds
1947 Friends of Bristol Art Gallery
1947 Arts Council exhibition Glastonbury and Cirencester
1948 Retrospective exhibition, Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield
1951 Festival of Britain exhibition Bristol Art Gallery
1953 Metropolitan Art Gallery, Tokyo
1956 Gimpel Fils, London
1956 Represented Britain at the XXVIII Venice Biennale
1958 Laing Art Galleries, Toronto
1960 One man exhibition, Waddington Galleries, London (also in 1962, 1964, 1966, 1968, 1969, 1971, 1973, 1976, 1982, 1985, 1990, 1993 and 1996)
1963 Major retrospective exhibition arranged by the Arts Council, Tate Gallery, London
1964 Civic Art Gallery, Southampton, University of Southampton Arts Festival
1966 Tib Lane Gallery, Manchester, Poindexter Gallery, New York; Worthing Art Gallery
1967 Treasures from West Country exhibition, Bristol City Art Gallery
1967 Stone Gallery, Newcastle
1971 Basil Jacobs Fine Art, London
1972 Rutland Gallery, London, Landscape into Abstract
1978 Burstow Gallery, Brighton College
1978 Retrospective exhibition, Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne
1979 Retrospective exhibition, Royal Academy
1980 Bohun Gallery, Henley-on-Thames
1982 New Art Centre, London
1987 Oriel 31, Welshpool and Newtown, Powys
1989 Retrospective exhibition, Serpentine Gallery, London
1991 Cleveland Bridge Gallery, Bath
1993 Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London
1993 Pallant House Gallery, Chichester
1993 Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal
2000 Jonathan Clark Fine Art, London, A Visual Sound
2003 Jonathan Clark Fine Art, London, Landscapes
2005 Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne
2005 Jonathan Clark Fine Art, Nudes
2007 Pallant House Gallery, Chichester
2007 Jonathan Clark Fine Art, London, The Flower Paintings
2009 Jonathan Clark Fine Art, London, Unseen Paintings from the 1930s
2019 Garden Museum, London
2019 'Space Through Colour': Pallant House Gallery, Chichester; then Djanogly Gallery, Lakeside Arts, University of Nottingham
Sources
Art Fact
External links
159 artworks by or after Ivon Hitchens at the Art UK site
Tate Britain, London