Lot 78: Anthony Hill , Composition 1950 Mixed Media

signed with monogram and in full and inscribed with title on the backboard mixed media on paper

70 by 52.5cm., 27 1/2 by 20 3/4 in.

London, Hayward Gallery, Anthony Hill: Retrospective , 1983, no.4.

PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF THE LATE JOHN MILNES-SMITH
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 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 currents. 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, Constructed Art in England After the Second World War: A Neglected Avant-Garde, Yale University Press, New Haven & London 2005, p.110).
To be sold with a letter from the artist 10 September 1985 and a copy of the 1983 Hayward Gallery Catalogue.