Lot 42: ANTHONY HILL

ANTHONY HILL B.1930 BLACK POLYGONS - 1954-55 signed with monogram and dated 54-55 on the reverse ripolin on board 152.5 by 126.5cm.; 60 by 49¾in.

London, Hayward Gallery, Anthony Hill, 20th May - 10th July 1983, cat. no.231, illustrated p.20, lent by the artist;
London, Austin/Desmond Fine Art, Anthony Hill: Works 1954-1982, 12th September - 10th October 2003, illustrated p.11.

Alastair Grieve, Constructed Abstract Art in England after the Second World War: A Neglected Avant-Garde, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2005, illustrated pl.246, p.184.

The Artist
Austin/Desmond Fine Art, London, where acquired by the present owner in February 2008

Hill first met Pasmore and Adams in 1949 whilst a student at the Central School, and he became by far the youngest of the group of artists who are known under the collective grouping of the Constructivists. By 1951, and at the age of just twenty-one, Hill was already in correspondence with Duchamp, Max Bill and Charles Biederman and was well aware of current Parisian trends.

His earliest works are remarkable in that unlike his elders, he was not moving from a realist position, his work having always been abstract, and the small corpus of surviving pieces demonstrate an extraordinary fluency of composition and a wonderful catholicity of choice in materials. Incorporating industrial and household paints, paper, fabric and other material collage, these works have a freshness that stands out at over half a century's distance and fully justify Alastair Grieve's observation that Hill's work 'was certainly unlike anything else being produced in England' (Alastair Grieve, op.cit., p.110).