Vibrant geometries and patterns, ziggurats, wooden boxes, political collages, glass, and ceramic pieces - Joe Tilson's artistic production has been rich and eclectic. Widely regarded as the "father of British Pop Art", a somewhat limiting label, Tilson, who passed away last week at the age of 95, skillfully diversified his career while consistently maintaining a subversive undertone.
Born in 1928, Tilson grew up in Lewisham, south-east London, amidst the challenges of poverty.
Despite his artistic inclination, his father had different aspirations for him and postwar he enrolled at the Brixton School of Building. There he studied joinery, leaving it at 15 to pursue a career as a carpenter and cabinet maker between 1944 and 1946.
After completing his service in the RAF until 1949, he enrolled at St Martin's School of Art alongside notable figures such as Leon Kossoff, Frank Auerbach, and Bernard Cohen.
During this period, he became a member of the I.C.A on Dover Street, where he crossed paths with Richard Hamilton, Eduardo Paolozzi, and Reyner Banham.
In 1952, Tilson continued his artistic journey at the Royal College of Art, sharing this phase with fellow artists Peter Blake and Richard Smith. His achievements expanded in 1955 when he secured the Rome Prize, and he relocated to Rome.
It was there that he encountered Joslyn Morton, who at the time was studying under Marino Marini at the Brera Academy in Milan. The couple resided in Cefalú, Sicily, and married in 1956 in Venice, where they shared a studio at Casa Frollo on the Giudecca.
Following a stint in Catalonia with Peter Blake, in 1958 they returned to London where the Pop Art movement, led by figures like Peter Blake and Richard Hamilton, had already taken shape.
Tilson taught at St. Martin's School of Art from 1958 to 1963, and his career continued at the Slade School of Art, University College London, King's College in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the School of Visual Arts in New York, and the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg.
From 1958 onward, Tilson showcased his work internationally in Germany, Italy, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, and the USA, among the other countries, while his inaugural solo exhibition took place at the Marlborough Gallery in London in 1962.
Tilson's early Pop Art pieces were different from those created by other artists as they were wooden reliefs and constructions and revealed his carpentry skills.
In his "Wood Relief No 17" (1961, part of the Tate collection), for example, a woman's mouth is represented with exclamation-mark teeth intricately hand-carved from softwoods, with each element being detachable from the others.
His proficiency in carpentry was further evident in the "A-Z Box of Friends and Family" (1963), resembling a traditional printer's tray, but containing miniaturized artworks by his contemporaries, such as David Hockney and Eduardo Paolozzi, as well as some of his artist family members including his wife Jos Tilson and children Sophy, Jake and Anna.
From the early 1960s onward, Joe Tilson's artistic expression consistently embraced various forms. In the latter part of the 1960s, he explored themes inspired by Greek mythology and, following his relocation to the countryside in Wiltshire, he set upon a quest for the sacred in Nature.
Tilson's versatility extends to prolific printmaking on a large scale, employing an extensive array of techniques. His large works on paper utilize every known print technique and carborundum relief. The distinctive nature of his creations spans conventional painted canvases or panels, as well as pieces in wood, ceramic, or stone, incorporating natural materials such as straw or rope. These pieces take on diverse forms, ranging from ladders and boxes to standing totems and various other objects.
At times Tilson's acrylic-painted wood constructions, such as the ziggurat (a form reminiscent of an ancient Mesopotamian stepped pyramid symbolizing the connection between heaven and earth), resembled a playful arrangement of stacked toys. In some of of ziggurats, Tilson boldly incorporated colored dots on each level, reflecting through its shape the artist's anti-hierarchical social perspective.
In 1964, Tilson designed the British Section of the Triennale of Milan and exhibited in the British Pavilion of the 23rd Venice Biennale, that passed to history as the Pop Art Biennale since it featured artists like Rauschenberg, Johns, Dine, and Oldenburg.
A semester teaching at the School of Visual Arts in New York further broadened his artistic perspective. But, with the Vietnam War, Tilson's political convictions underwent a shift, and he began creating openly anti-American works, such as his "Pages" series incorporating black-and-white screenprinted newspaper images of modern figures including Mao, Malcolm X and Ho Chi Minh. Despite their less commercialized nature, these works (that also cleverly integrated references to his own art like an image taken from Elio Petri's film La decima vittima (The 10th Victim) with Elsa Martinelli standing next to his "Look!" artwork - View this photo), they were not universally well-received.
Discontent with the perceived progress of the consumer society led him to the creation of the "Alchera" series inspired by Pound, Joyce, Yeats, and the Mediterranean traditions, including Neo-Platonism. Building on previous structural elements like the alphabet, the seven days of the week, numerology, and the five senses, these pieces incorporated labyrinths, ladders, words, and symbols.This shift towards this inspiration prompted a family relocation, in favor of quieter places - an old ex-Rectory in Wiltshire and a farmhouse in the mountains of Tuscany near Cortona.
During the '70s there were several retrospectives about Tilson, the most notable one at the Boymans van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam. Further exhibitions included reliefs and sculptures in maiolica and terracotta produced in collaboration with the Cooperativa Ceramica d'Imola at the Bologna Art Fair and Le Crete Senesi.
In 1980 Tilson met Henri Goetz in Paris, the inventor of carborundum printmaking and this led to daring creations on paper, although he also ventured into glass art in the mid-'90s.
Other exhibitions and retrospectives were organized in the years that followed, many of them in Italy; over the past four decades, Tilson maintained studios in Venice and near Cortona, in Tuscany.
Despite returning to London from Wiltshire, in more recent years Tilson expressed his discontent with Brexit, which he believed adversely affected the art world.
The Cristea Roberts Gallery and the Marlborough Gallery in London that represent him organized exhibitions earlier this year to commemorate his 95th birthday. But don't despair if you missed them: you can be sure there will be more retrospective about him in future, besides, you can still get inspired by the materials on his site that also features a few downloadable books and catalogues about him and his work in the archive section.
These materials (such as the volume on his notebooks) offer insights into the late artist and into his creative process, while serving at the same time as a profound exploration of the diverse materials, patterns and colors he employed in his works.
Image credits for this post
All images in this post by and copyright Joe Tilson
Geometry? 3, 1964
oil on wood relief
188 x 188 cm
A-Z Box of Friends and Family, 1963
Mixed media,
233 x 152 cm
Vox Box, 1963
Oil on wood relief,
153 x 122 cm
Look!, 1964
Oil, acrylic on wood relief
186.69 x 195.58 x 7.62 cm
Zikkurat 3, 1967
oil and acrylic on wood relief
216 x 216 cm
Page 20: He, She & It, 1969- 1970
Screenprint on canvas on wood relief.
187 x 126 cm
Eye Mantra, 1971-2
oil on wood
201 x 201 cm
Zikkurat 5, stairway to the stars, 1967
oil on wood relief
203 x 330 x 12 cm
Conjunction Peschi Catonis, 2003
oil on canvas on wood relief
138 x 138 cm
The Stones of Venice San Marco 36/II, 2018
acrylic on canvas
183 x 183 cm
The Stones of Venice Ca’Foscari 4 diptych, 2019
acrylic on canvas
34 x 45.5 cm
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