Background
He was born on 23 April 1930 in London, and studied at the Street Martin"s and the Central Schools of Art 1948-1951.
He was born on 23 April 1930 in London, and studied at the Street Martin"s and the Central Schools of Art 1948-1951.
Bryanston School, Saint Martin"s School of Art, Central School of Arts and Crafts.
with Redo) 1969, 1980; retrospective exhibition Hayward Gallery, London 1983; Visiting Lecturer Chelsea School of Art, Visiting Research Association, Department, of Mathematics, University College, London; Leverhulme Fellowship 1971-1972, Honorary Research Fellow, University College 1971-1972, Visiting Research Association since 1972.His fellow members in this group were Victor Pasmore, Adrian Heath, John Ernest, Kenneth Martin, Mary Martin, Gillian Wise (artist) and Stephen Gilbert. He began painting in the style of Dada and Surrealism 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 in 1958. He has participated in exhibitions of abstract and constructivist art in the United Kingdom, Paris, Germany, Holland, Poland, Switzerland and the United States of America. In 1978 he exhibited in the Arts Council"s exhibition, Constructive Context, alongside a number if artists such as Jeffrey Steele 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 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.
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, 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"s authoritative book of 2005.
Together with his colleague John Ernest 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.
Married Yuriko Kaetsu in 1978.