Anthony Hill (23 April 1930 – 13 October 2020) was an

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

artist An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse refers to a practitioner in the visual arts only. However, th ...

painter Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ai ...

and

relief Relief is a sculptural method in which the sculpted pieces are bonded to a solid background of the same material. The term ''relief'' is from the Latin verb ''relevo'', to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is to give the impression that the ...

-maker, originally a member of the post-

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

British art movement termed the Constructionist Group whose work was essentially in the international constructivist tradition.

Biography

His fellow members in this group were

Victor Pasmore Edwin John Victor Pasmore, CH, CBE (3 December 190823 January 1998) was a British artist. He pioneered the development of abstract art in Britain in the 1940s and 1950s. Early life Pasmore was born in Chelsham, Surrey, on 3 December 1908. He ...

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John Ernest John Ernest (May 6, 1922 – July 21, 1994) was an American-born constructivist abstract artist. He was born in Philadelphia, in 1922. After living and working in Sweden and Paris from 1946 to 1951, he moved to London, England, where he lived and w ...

, Kenneth Martin,

Mary Martin Mary Virginia Martin (December 1, 1913 – November 3, 1990) was an American actress and singer. A muse of Rodgers and Hammerstein, she originated many leading roles on stage over her career, including Nellie Forbush in '' South Pacific'' (194 ...

, Gillian Wise (artist) and Stephen Gilbert. He was born on 23 April 1930 in London, and studied at the St Martin's and the Central Schools of Art 1948–51. He began painting in the style of

Dada Dada () or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire (Zurich), Cabaret Voltaire (in 1916). New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 192 ...

and

Surrealism Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to l ...

in 1948 but quickly moved on to geometric abstract idioms. He made his first relief in 1954 and abandoned painting for relief-making in 1956. One feature of these reliefs has been the use of non-traditional materials such as industrial aluminium and Perspex. His first one-man show of reliefs was held at the

Institute of Contemporary Arts The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) is an artistic and cultural centre on The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. Located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps and Admiralty Arch, the ICA c ...

in 1958. He has participated in exhibitions of abstract and constructivist art in the UK, Paris, Germany, Holland, Poland, Switzerland and the USA. In 1978 he exhibited in the Arts Council's exhibition, Constructive Context, alongside a number if artists such as

Jeffrey Steele Jeffrey LeVasseur (born August 27, 1961), known as Jeffrey Steele, is an American country music singer and songwriter. Along with recording his own material, Steele has become a prolific Nashville songwriter, having co-written more than 60 hit ...

and Peter Lowe who had begun working in a systematised constructive mode in the mid to late 1960s and came together in the Systems Group in December 1969. Hill, however, along with the Martins, declined membership of this group. In 1983 the

Hayward Gallery The Hayward Gallery is an art gallery within the Southbank Centre in central London, England and part of an area of major arts venues on the South Bank of the River Thames. It is sited adjacent to the other Southbank Centre buildings (the Roy ...

held a major retrospective exhibition of Anthony Hill's constructivist work. Anthony Hill has had a lifelong fascination with mathematics, and there are many mathematicians among his circle of acquaintances. Together with his colleague

he made contributions to graph theory ( crossing number) and in 1979, in recognition of a number of his mathematical papers, he was elected a member of the London Mathematical Society and made a visiting research associate in the Department of Mathematics at University College, London. But although almost all his reliefs have an underlying mathematical structure or logic, he was always insistent that in his art, in his own words, "the mathematical thematic or mathematical process can only be a component: one is calculating or organising something which is clearly not mathematical." From the late 1980s onward, working in parallel with his systems-based work but in a very different mode, Anthony Hill exhibited dadaist pictures and collages under the pseudonym Achill Redo. The

Tate Gallery Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...

, London has collections under both of the names Anthony Hill and Achill Redo. An excellent summary of the life and constructivist work of Anthony Hill, together with that of the other British constructivists, is given in

Alastair Grieve Alistair is a masculine given name. It is an Anglicised form of the Scottish Gaelic '' Alasdair''. The latter is most likely a Scottish Gaelic variant of the Norman French Alexandre or Latin Alexander, which was incorporated into English in the s ...

's authoritative book of 2005. He died on 13 October 2020 at the age of 90.Anthony Hill obituary
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References

* Fowler, Alan. Essay in online Philosophy of Mathematics Education Journal No. 24, December 2009, 'A Rational Aesthetic'. * Fowler, Alan, Essay, 'The Systems Group and its Constructivist Context', in exhibition catalogue 'A Rational Aesthetic', Southampton City Art Gallery, 2009. * Grieve, Alastair, Essay in exhibition catalogue 'Anthony Hill', Arts Council, London, 1983 * Grieve, Alastair ''Constructed Abstract Art in England After the Second World War: A Neglected Avant Garde'', Yale University Press. 2005. . * Harary, Frank and Hill, Anthony. On the number of crossings in a complete graph. ''Proceedings of the Edinburgh Math. Society'' (2), 13:333-338, 1962/1963. * Hill, Anthony, editor ''Data: Directions in Art, Theory and Aesthetics'', Faber and Faber. 1968. * Hill, Anthony, editor ''Duchamp: Passim'', Craftsman House. 1994.

External links

Artworks in the Tate collection by Anthony Hill

Artworks in the Tate collection under the pseudonym Achill Redo
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Hill, Anthony 20th-century English painters English male painters 21st-century English painters 21st-century English male artists 1930 births 2020 deaths Mathematical artists 20th-century English male artists