Study for Progression of Rectangles

In the early 1950s Antony Hill made a series of sketches and paintings exploring different arrangements of black and white rectangles, progressing along a central horizontal axis. [1] In this sketch on graph paper, Hill tests out the impact of adjusting the sequence. The subtle variations between the different versions of Progression of Rectangles demonstrate Hill’s commitment to a new language of ‘constructionism’ in art, non-figurative works generated from their own internal logic. [2]

In 1954 Hill translated the composition of Progression of Rectangles into his first relief format works, which share the same title. [3] The rectangles are cut in black and white plastic and placed on a transparent sheet, which has been mounted above a plywood base panel using distancing pegs. The relief format introduces a relationship between the different surfaces and planes of Progression of Rectangles that Hill went on to investigate more fully in his consequent constructed reliefs, abandoning painting altogether in early 1956. [4]

Lisa Newby, February 2021

[1] See sketches 31581, 31682 and 31688 in the Sainsbury Centre collection. A version of Progression of Rectangles (1953) in emulsion on canvas was included in Hill’s 1983 retrospective exhibition at the Hayward Gallery and is illustrated in the catalogue. See in Anthony Hill, A Retrospective Exhibition, exh. cat. (London: Hayward Gallery, 1983), p.23.

[2] For a recent account of Hill’s early constructionist paintings, see Sam Gathercole, ‘The Geometry of Syntactics, Semantics and Pragmatics: Anthony Hill’s Concrete Paintings’, Tate Papers, No.31 (Spring 2019), https://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/31/anthony-hill-concrete-paintings

[3] See 31539 in the Sainsbury Centre collection.

[4] Alastair Grieve ‘The development of Anthony Hill’s work from 1950 to the present’ in Anthony Hill, A Retrospective Exhibition, exh. cat. (London: Hayward Gallery, 1983), pp.5-67, (p.18).