"Look"

The artist was born in London on August 24, 1928; between 1944 and 1946 he worked as a carpenter and joiner while studying at the Brixton School of Building; he then served in the military, from 1946 to 1949, in the RAF (Royal Air Force).

In 1949 he made his first trip to Italy. From 1949 to 1952 he attended St. Martin's School of Art in London, along with Leon Kossof and Frank Auerbach (who would become two of the leading exponents, along with Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and Ronald B. Kitaj, of the so-called "London School"); he would return to the same institution as a teacher from 1958 to 1963. Meanwhile, Tilson attended, from 1952 to 1955, the Royal College of Art in London, along with Peter Blake (one of the best known exponents of British Pop Art, whose cover of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is celebrated) and Richard Smith.

Between 1955 and 1957 he stayed and worked first in Italy and then in Spain; in Rome he met Joslyn Morton, then a student at the Brera Academy in Milan, where he took sculpture courses with Marino Marini. Joe and Joslyn lived for a time in Sicily, in Cefalù, and in 1956 they married in Venice, where they kept a studio in Casa Frollo on the Giudecca: three children, Jake, Anna and Sophy, were born of the marriage.

After spending a few months in Catalonia with Peter Blake, the Tilsons returned to London; here Joe began his teaching career: after St. Martin's School of Art, he taught at the Slade School of Art, University College London and King's College, Newcastle-upon-Tyne; in 1966 he taught at the School of Visual Arts in New York and in 1971 at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg.

After the early paintings of the 1950s, which reflected the suggestions of his discovery of the hitherto unknown reality of Italy and Spain, Tilson embarked on a peculiar path that led him to make reliefs in rough wood, the result of assemblages, on the surface, geometric forms of various configurations, which were followed, in the early 1960s, by works in which color burst forth, which again became attenuated in the cycles of the 1970s, closely linked to his interests in primitive cultures (the civilizations of the American Indians , the "dream time" of the Australian aborigines, alchemical thought) and ancient Greek mythology; color then regains strength and consistency in the works of the last thirty-five years, in which the artist has elaborated a kind of diary in the form of a work of his own intellectual researches and life experiences, increasingly aware of the widespread presence, even in small things, of the sacred, of the breath of what is infinite and eternal, unscathed by human events: from the animals he encounters daily in the days when he lives among the woods where his home in Umbria stands to the facades of churches and the shapes of their floors in Venice. Strictly consistent with this peculiar vision of the world and human existence, in the early 1970s Tilson left London to immerse himself in the countryside, in close contact with nature and its cycles of life, going to live in 1972 in Christian Malford's Old Rectory in Wiltshire and, for a few months a year, at Casa Cardeto, not far from Cortona (Arezzo).

Tilson would return to London in the late 1890s; his summer stays in the remote Teverina Valley and in the small old house he fixed up in Venice continue to this day.

Tilson's exhibition activity unraveled, intense and qualified, over the past fifty years holding his first solo exhibition in 1962 at the Marlborough Gallery in London; in the following years, and until 1977, he exhibited repeatedly in various venues in Marlborough itself; subsequently, beginning in 1978, he exhibited regularly at the Waddington Galleries in London; since 2011 Tilson has again established a contractual relationship binding him to Marlborough. Public exhibitions include at least: the major anthological exhibition at the Boymans-van-Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam in 1973, later passed to the Musée Royal des Beaux Arts in Antwerp-a substantial part of that exhibition was presented at the Scuderie della Pilotta in Parma in 1974; the exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1979; the anthological exhibition at the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol in 1983; and the exhibition at the Sackler Wing of the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 2002. Particularly intense was Tilson's exhibition activity in Italy, where in 1964 he participated in the Venice Biennale, in the Pavilion of Great Britain, and in 1974 in the aforementioned anthological exhibition in Parma. He then exhibited at the Tour Fromage in Aosta in 1991, and, in 1995, he presented Le Crete Senesi at the Pinacoteca in Macerata and at the Palazzo Pubblico - Magazzini del Sale in Siena - in 1996 the Municipality of Siena entrusted him with the realization of the Palio -; where in 1964 he participated in the Venice Biennale, the Pavilion of Great Britain, and in 1974 in the already mentioned anthological exhibition in Parma. He then exhibited at the Tour Fromage in Aosta in 1991, and, in 1995, he presented Le Crete Senesi at the Pinacoteca di Macerata and at the Palazzo Pubblico - Magazzini del Sale in Siena - in 1996 the Municipality of Siena entrusted him with the realization of the Palio -; where in 1964 he participated in the Venice Biennial, in the Pavilion of Great Britain, and in 1974 in the already mentioned anthological exhibition in Parma. He then exhibited at the Tour Fromage in Aosta in 1991, and, in 1995, he presented Le Crete Senesi at the Pinacoteca in Macerata and at the Palazzo Pubblico - Magazzini del Sale in Siena - in 1996 the Municipality of Siena entrusted him with the realization of the Palio -;

Subsequently, the artist held several exhibitions in important public spaces and private galleries in Italy and abroad, which it would be long to list in detail here, up to the one at the Saint Bénin Center in Aosta in 2014.  

Also significant is the presence of his works in the collections of important public museums internationally, including at least: Boijmans van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam; Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon; Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Museo Civico, Turin; Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome; Kunsthalle, Basel; Kunstmuseum, Hannover; Kunstverein, Hamburg; Museum of Louisiana, Humlebaek; Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Caracas; Museum of Modern Art, Ciudad Bolivar; Museo de Arte, São Paulo, Brazil; Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tehran; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum voor Schone-Kunsten, Antwerp; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; National Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Royal Academy of Arts, London; Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; Sharjah Museum of Art, United Arab Emirates; South African National Gallery, Cape Town; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Tate, London; The Royal Collection, London; CSAC, University of Parma; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.

In 1985 Joe Tilson was elected as a member of the Royal Academy of Arts in London, and in 2001 he was called to join the historic Accademia di San Luca in Rome, further testifying to his "elective" link with Italy, a sort of his second homeland, which sees him living not only in Casa Cardeto but also in Venice for some months of the year. It is precisely the lagoon city that has been the prevailing subject of his paintings in recent years, as evidenced by some of the graphic works created by Gino Berardinelli's Stamperia, which often resort to the motif of large picture postcards emerging from a white envelope: a sort of message in a bottle, a confession of an uninterrupted love - that for Venice - that has lasted since 1956.