Ivon Hitchens 1893-1979
The Blue Door, 1972
oil on canvas
41 x 109 cm
16 1/8 x 42 7/8 in
16 1/8 x 42 7/8 in
signed and dated; titled and inscribed on a label attached to the stretcher
This depicts the back door of Greenleaves, the Sussex home that Hitchens built for his family after being bombed out of London in 1940. The door had become a regular...
This depicts the back door of Greenleaves, the Sussex home that Hitchens built for his family after being bombed out of London in 1940. The door had become a regular motif in Hitchens’ work by 1972, as had the distinctive use of a wide-format canvas, where guides the viewer across the surface. Hitchens’ concern lay in expressing the experience of a place, rather than creating a mere likeness, ‘my pictures are painted to be “listened” to’ he declared in a 1956 article for the Royal College of Art journal. His later work shows his commitment to ‘visual sound’, becoming brighter in colour and more fractious in form: ‘visual sounds is of first and greatest importance. Without it the picture is useless’.
Provenance
Private Collection, London5
of
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