Roger Hilton spent his formative years during the late 1930s in Paris, where he was surrounded by the inspiration of Wassily Kandinsky’s expressive colour compositions and the lessons of Tachiste painter Roger Bissière at the Académie Ranson. Following the Second World War, Hilton continued to be acutely aware of developments in European modern art as he maintained close friendships with artists such as the Dutch painter Constant Nieuwenhuys. In 1953, the pair travelled together to Paris and Amsterdam, where Hilton experienced Piet Mondrian’s pure, geometric abstraction first hand at the Stedelijk and Gemeentemuseum.

'Untitled', 1962 is characteristic of the sensual, improvisatory style of organic abstraction that Hilton developed throughout the 1950s and 60s as a pivotal member of the St Ives School. During this period Hilton used his numerous sketches of the female figure as inspiration for a new aesthetic of curvaceous line and natural form that evoked fragments of the human body. The integration of organic corporeal shapes into Hilton’s compositions was also accompanied by a change in technique, which embraced a range of gestural marks and motifs made with a more fluid, tactile application of paint.