Biography
Joe Tllson was born in London in 1928. Having worked as a carpenter and joiner from 1944 to 1946, he served in the RAF until 1949. Following his national Service, he went to St. Martin's School of Art (with Leon Kossoff and Frank Auerbach) and in 1952 to the Royal College of Art (with Peter Blake and Richard Smith). In 1955, after winning the Rome Prize, he lived and worked in Rome where he met Joslyn Morton, who was studying under Marino Marini at the Brera in Milan. They lived together at Catalonia in Sicily and, in 1956, were married in Venice from their studio in Casa Frollo on me Giudecca. After some months in Catalonia with Peter Blake, they returned to London where Tilson taught at St Martin's School of Art from 1958 to 1963, then at the Slade School of Art, University College, London; at King's College, Newcastle-upon-Tyne; at the School of Visual Arts, New York; and the Hochschule fur Bildende Kunste, Hamburg.

For more than forty years Tilson has been making and exhibiting paintings, constructions, reliefs, prints and multiples. Originally associated with the British Pop Art movement in the early 1960s, he was soon led in a different direction by his deeply held convictions and his dissatisfaction with the technology and industrial 'progress' of the consumer society.

‘Art’, Tilson has written, 'is a symbolic discourse of which mankind alone is capable… I think of art as a tool of understanding, an instrument of transformation to put yourself in harmony with the world and with life … The basic given data of experience and the physiological and psychological aspects of procreation, birth, growth and death remain relatively unchanged.' The themes Tilson chooses for his work aspire to transcend time and cut across cultures to communicate the sacred in nature via references to pre-classical mythology, the Norm American Indians, the Dream Time of the Australian Aboriginals, and alchemy. Modular structuring devices - the letters of the alphabet, the days of the week, the circular mnemonic devices of Alchera which relate to the four Cardinal points, to the four Elements and to the four Seasons, the lunar months, labyrinths, ladders, words, symbols - are assembled in matrices layered with complex universal meaning.

A contemporary of Frank Auerbach, Leon Kossoff, R. B. Kitaj, Peter Blake, Allen Jones, Patrick Caulfield and David Hockney (all students of the Royal College of Art), Tilson first had his works exhibited internationally in 1964 at the XXXII Venice Biennale. A retrospective exhibition at the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam was also shown in Belgium and Italy in 1971. Other retrospectives rook place at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1979, and at the Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol, in 1984- He has also exhibited in numerous public and private collections.

Tilson's first one-man exhibition rook place at the Marlborough Gallery, London, in 1962. He continued to exhibit at their galleries
in New York and Rome until 1977 when he joined me Waddington Galleries. In 1985, Joe Tilson was elected to membership of the Royal Academy of Arts, London.

Recent exhibitions include reliefs and sculptures in maiolica and terracotta made over the last ten years with the Cooperativa Ceramica d'Imola at the Bologna Art Fair, and Le Crete Senesi at the Gio Marconi Gallery, Milan, the Pinacoteca Macerata, and then the Palazzo Pubblico, Siena, for which city he was invited to paint the prize banner for the Palio of 1996. That year he won the 'Grand Prix d'Honneur' at the Biennale of Ljubljana, followed in 1997 by a retrospective exhibition of prints at the Cankarjev Dom, Ljubljana .
Tilson's one-man exhibition 'Selected Works' was shown at the Castello Doria, Porro Venere, in 1999. In the same year 'I Tilson', an exhibition of terracottas by his wife Jos and his own Conjunctions, was held at the Palazzo Pubblico, Siena. The exhibition 'Conjunctions' subsequently travelled to the Galleria Comunale d'Arte, Cesena, and the Pinacoteca Civica, Follonica, in 2000. In 2001, selected retrospective exhibitions were organised at Castelbasso and at the Gio Matconi Gallery, Milan, and he was elected Associate of the Accademia di San Luca in Rome. In 2002, as well as his exhibition in the Sackler Wing at the Royal Academy of Arts, an exhibition of his prints took place at the Alan Cristea Gallery and recent paintings were shown at the Beaux Arts Gallery.

Among Tilson’s awards are the Gulbenkian Foundation Prize in 1960 and the Grand Prix d’Honneur, Biennale of Ljubljana in 1996, the year in which he was invited to paint the banner for the Palio, Siena. He was elected Royal Academician in 1991 (ARA 1985) and lives and works in London and Cortona, Tuscany.

Recent Solo Exhibitions
2002 Royal Academy of Arts, London (Sackler Galleries)
2002 Beaux Arts, London
2002 Alan Cristea Gallery, London
2001 Castelbasso, Abruzzo
2001 Giò Marconi, Milan
2000 Galleria Comunale d’Arte, Cesena
2000 Civica Pinacoteca “Amedeo Modigliani”, Follonica
1999 Castello Doria, Porto Venere
1999 Palazzo Pubblico, Siena
1999 Theo Waddington, Boca Raton, Florida
1999 Peter Guyther Gallery, London
1998 Marino alla Scala, Milan
1998 Theo Waddington Fine Art, London
1997 Cankarjev Dom., Ljubljana
1996 Mestna Gallery, Ljubljana
1996 Annandale Galleries, Sydney
1995 Alan Cristea Gallery, London
1995 Theo Waddington Fine Art, London
1995 Palazzo Pubblico, Siena
1995 Westend Galerie, Frankfurt
1994 Galleria Rotta, Genova
1994 Pinacoteca, Macerata
1993 Heter A Hunermann Galerie GmbH, Dusseldorf
1993 Cooperativa Ceramica d’Imola
1993 Giò Marconi, Milan
1993 Multimedia Brescia
1992 Waddington Galleries, London
1992 Waddington Graphics, London
1992 Extra Moemia, Todi
1991 Galerie Inge Baecker, Cologne
1991 Tour Fromage, Aosta
1991 Plymouth City Museum
1990 Fortezza Medicea, Cortona
1990 Centro Culturale Fontanella Borghese, Rome

Selected Public Collections
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
Arts Council of Great Britain, London
Australian National Gallery, Canberra
British Council, London
Contemporary Art Society, London
Christchurch College, Oxford
Galleria Nazzionale d' Arte Moderna, Rome
Gulbenkian Foundation, London
Johannesburg Art Gallery
Kunsthalle, Basel
Kunstverein, Hamburg
Laing Art Gallery and Museum, Newcastle upon Tyne
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh
New College, Oxford
Queensland Art Gallery
Royal Academy, London
South African National Gallery, Capetown
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
Tate Gallery, London
Ulster Museum, Belfast
Victoria & Albert Museum, London
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
Yale Centre for British Art