cover image Ivon Hitchens

Ivon Hitchens

Peter Khoroche. Trafalgar Square Publishing, $85 (224pp) ISBN 978-0-233-98607-4

English painter Hitchens (1893-1979) translated his intense communion with nature into a ``visual music'' employing rhythm, counterpoint and echo as unifying devices. In landscapes, room interiors and still lifes he melded the discoveries of Braque and Cezanne into his own pictorial language. His sensuous, Matisse-like nudes and figure studies balance abstraction and realism. His murals--carefully orchestrated symphonies of color--create kaleidoscopic patterns of endless movement. In this extensively illustrated monograph, Khoroche, author of a catalogue of Hitchens's work, argues that the easy flow of paint and romantic emotionality belie ``a painter of remarkable intellectual discipline.'' This is the first full-length study of an artist who resolutely went his own way, defying the trends. (July)