Ivon Hitchens studied at St John's Wood School of Art and at the Royal Academy Schools between 1912 and 1919. He exhibited with the 7 & 5 society in 1921 and continued to do so throughout the 1920s. He was part of the circle of artists known as the London group and exhibited with Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore and others during the 1930s. After his house was bombed in 1940 he moved to a patch of woodland near Petworth, W. Sussex, living at first in a caravan which later acquired numerous outbuildings. He worked there for the next 40 years, distanced from the predominantly literary currents of British modern art. In his commitment to colour and open brushwork he was closer to the modern French masters, especially in his Fauvist orange nudes set in sunlit interiors, painting mostly outdoors.

References: P. Heron: Ivon Hitchens, Penguin Mod. Masters (Harmondsworth, 1955); A. Bowness, ed.: Ivon Hitchens (London, 1973); Ivon Hitchens: A Retrospective Exhibition (exh. cat. by A. Causey, London, RA, 1979.)