City of Tomorrow
ca. 1960


Untitled
ca. 1960s


Untitled
ca. 1960s


Untitled
ca. 1960s

BIOGRAPHY

Henry Hill was born in Oak Park, Illinois, in 1918. His father was an executive in the Haywood/Wakefield Furniture Company, where his grandfather was also the company president. Hill attended Cornell University and studied sculpture as the only male in the fine arts department. Claiming to have "majored in bridge and weekend parties" he dropped out with less than a year left of his studies. Hoping to work as an artist for the fledgling Disney Company, he went to California in 1939. But when this dream failed, he returned to Illinois. When the United States entered the Second World War, Hill joined the army and was sent to Officer Candidate School. As a first lieutenant, he fought in North Africa and Italy, but cracked under the strain of warfare. He spent much of the latter part of the war as a combat-fatigue casualty in the psychiatric ward of an Allied military hospital in Italy, assailed by guilt when other members of his battalion were killed in battle. After the war he moved to Los Angeles and briefly studied art on a disability pension at the University of Southern California. In 1950 he became involved in the Dianetics movement associating with it's founder, L. Ron Hubbard. Hill became intrigued with Reichian therapy, a radical form of psychotherapy. After attending the California Chiropractic College he practiced as a chiropractor and a Reichian therapist until the mid-1960s, when, in his late forties, he was swept into the drug culture of the "hippie" era. Around this time, he experimented with treating patients with LSD and colored light therapy. Hill had already been using LSD himself, which he says was "the most beautiful experience of my life." He began to paint obsessively, and continued for several years. He was a vocal citizen and ran for political office several times. Campaigning once for the U.S. Senate, he was the only Republican to advocate the legalization of marijuana, prostitution and gambling. Throughout the years he subsisted entirely on his small military pension, creating thousands of paintings but exhibiting none until 1994. He now lives in a tiny apartment crammed with his own work, in an older part of South Hollywood. Of himself he has said, "I always identified with Pinocchio, the wooden puppet who always wanted to live as a whole man."

BOOKS

The End is Near! Roger Manley. Illustrated. Bio.