In his final year the RCA awarded Tilson the Rome Prize. This allowed him to live in Italy for a year, which provided inspiration for many of his works during his career. 

As pop art emerged, he responded quickly, adapting his earlier, highly formalised abstract work to create objects and prints using bold colours and stark imagery. He taught at St Martin’s from 1958 to 1963 at the same time as the budding pop artists were at the RCA. He met Patrick Caulfield and Allen Jones and went on to make lasting friendships with Peter Blake and David Hockney. He also taught at The Slade School of Art and travelled to New York to teach at The School of Visual Arts. 

Tilson was an enthusiastic proponent of political activism, sexual liberation and social change. He consistently broke boundaries of 3D art, printing and print-making as he sought to widen the scope and impact of contemporary art. His first one-man show was held at the Marlborough Gallery, London in 1962, and he gained international recognition when his work was shown at the XXXII Venice Biennale in 1964 which famously included the works of Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Jim Dine and Claes Oldenburg.

Growing disillusionment with the consumer society led to a change in Tilson work in the 1970s. As he said: “Popular culture only played a part in my work for a five-year period in the mid to late 60s and even then, I was extremely sceptical about the role of popular culture in society, as you can tell from looking at my political works from that period. I was essentially anti-capitalist and anti-commodity.” 

After moving to Wiltshire in 1972, he began to use a wider variety of materials including stone, straw and rope blurring the distinction between two- and three-dimensional space. His art evolved away from pop content to address mythology and rural living.

Find Joe Tilson artwork from mainstream galleries here.