Ivon Hitchens (1893 – 1979)

Ivon Hitchens was born in London and studied at the Royal Academy Schools. During his lifetime his work was exhibited internationally and shown at the 1956 Venice Biennale. In 1940 his home in London was bombed and Hitchens moved to Sussex where the surrounding landscape and woods provided an endless source of inspiration. Hitchens wrote that he sought ‘to recreate the truth of nature by making my own song about it in paint’. He saw this ‘song’ as have distinct instruments: line, what the artist called formes (‘two-dimensional marks on the canvas not representing anything’), plane, shape, natan (more than just tone, this is a Japanese word denoting a deliberate harmony of darks and lights), chiaroscuro, and colour. Taken in conjunction with these instruments are his main ‘laws’ of composition: rhythm, repetition (echo), opposition, transition, symmetry, balance, and infinity. These suggested the direction and use of brush strokes to create the fundamental architecture of the picture