
Penny Day
Head of UK and Ireland
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Sold for £62,500 inc. premium
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Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner in the late 1970s
By the time the present work was painted, Ivon Hitchens' reputation as one of the leading British Artists of the 20th Century was secure. In 1956 he had been chosen to represent Britain at the Venice Biennale and was described by Patrick Heron as the most important English painter now living. Floral subjects were always of great interest to Ivon Hitchens who had exhibited works from this genre as far back as his first solo exhibition at The Mayor Gallery in 1925. Flowers, with their vibrancy of colour gave much scope for abstraction which became increasingly important to the artist as his style matured. Hitchens created his flower pictures in tandem with his landscapes and they can often be read in the same way; Arabesque of Flowers, which dates to 1957 being an excellent example. Indeed, it was Patrick Heron who commented that 'even his exquisite flower still lifes are somehow extended into the spatial dimensions of landscape'. (Patrick Heron in The New Statesman and Nation, 14 June 1952). Arabesque of Flowers is presented in trademark panoramic landscape format and combines rhythmic brushwork to create a truly expressive canvas.