Career
He became part of the "London Group" of artists and exhibited with them during the 1930s. His house was bombed in 1940 during World World War II, at which point he moved to a caravan on a patch of woodland near Petworth in West Sussex. He worked there for the next forty years, gradually augmenting his caravan with a series of buildings.
He is particularly well known for panoramic landscape paintings created from blocks of colour.
There is a huge mural by him in the main hall of Cecil Sharp House. His work was exhibited in the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1956.
1925 One-man exhibition, Mayor Gallery, London
1928 Arthur Tooth & Sons, London
1929 London Artists" Association, Cooling Galleries, London
1930 Heal"s Mansard Gallery, London
1933 Alex Reid & Lefevre, London (also 1935 and 1937)
1934 Participated in Objective Abstractions, Zwemmer Gallery
1940 First of ten one-man exhibitions, Leicester Galleries (also in 1942, 1944, 1947, 1949, 1950, 1952, 1954, 1957 and 1959)
1945 Retrospective exhibition, Temple Newsam House, Leeds
1948 Retrospective exhibition, Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield
1953 Metropolitan Art Gallery, Tokyo
1956 Gimpel Fils, London
1956 Represented Britain at the XXVIII venice Biennale
1958 Laing Art Galleries, Toronto
1960 One man exhibition, Waddington Galleries, London (also in 1962, 1964, 1966, 1968, 1969, 1971, 1973, 1976, 1982, 1985, 1990, 1993 and 1996)
1963 Major retrospective exhibition arranged by the Arts Council, Tate Gallery, London
1964 Civic Art Gallery, Southampton, University of Southampton Arts Festival
1966 Tib Lane Gallery, Manchester, Poindexter Gallery, New New York Worthing Art Gallery
1967 Stone Gallery, Newcastle
1971 Basil Jacobs Fine Art, London
1972 Rutland Gallery, London, Landscape into Abstract
1978 Burstow Gallery, Brighton College
1978 Retrospective exhibition, Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne
1979 Retrospective exhibition, Royal Academy
1980 Bohun Gallery, Henley-on-Thames
1982 New Art Centre, London
1987 Oriel 31, Welshpool and Newtown, Powys
1989 Retrospective exhibition, Serpentine Gallery, London
1991 Cleveland Bridge Gallery, Bath
1993 Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London
1993 Pallant House Gallery, Chichester
1993 Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal
2000 Jonathan Clark Fine Art, London, A Visual Sound
2003 Jonathan Clark Fine Art, London, Landscapes
2005 Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne
2005 Jonathan Clark Fine Art, Nudes
2007 Pallant House Gallery, Chichester
2007 Jonathan Clark Fine Art, London, The Flower Paintings
2009 Jonathan Clark Fine Art, London, Unseen Paintings from the 1930s
His father Alfred Hitchens (1861-1942) was a portrait and landscape painter.