Oi Yoi Yoi [SEP] creator
Oi Yoi Yoi
Oi Yoi Yoi is a 1963 oil painting by British painter Roger Hilton. Perhaps Hilton's best-known work, it is a free composition depicting a naked white woman. The central figure is abstracted, with simple black outlines drawn in charcoal of a featureless face, breasts and pubic triangle, and upraised arms. All four limbs are cut off at the edges of the frame. The white body contrasts with bold segments of background colour in yellow and red, blue and black. The work is inscribed
on the back "Oi, yoi, yoi/Hilton/Dec 63".
According to Hilton, the painting was inspired by a drunken argument with his second wife, Rose Hilton, who was dancing on a verandah, nude, shouting "oi yoi yoi", an expression of frustration or exasperation. According to his wife, the argument took place in France in the summer of 1962, before they were married. Hilton has rejected the suggestion that he took conscious inspiration from paintings of dancers and bathers by Cézanne