Graphic Monument to Rudolph Bauer

This screenprint is one of two works that Anthony Hill submitted for EXACTA, an exclusive portfolio of graphic work, compiled by Fausta Squatriti and Getulio Alviani in Milan between 1980 and 1985. Twenty-seven leading artists associated with international geometric abstraction were invited to contribute two related prints for the portfolio: one from an early phase of research, and another to show how this research had developed in their later practice. [1]

Hill produced the screenprint Graphic Monument to Rudolph Bauer in 1981. The monochrome geometric composition is typical of Hill’s work from the late 1960s onwards, which increasingly reflected his mathematical interests. Hill refers to this in a statement about Graphic Monument to Rudolph Bauer for the EXACTA portfolio:

‘A light-hearted piece… A white circle is drawn, and a series of white disks of different sizes touch it, sometimes on the inside, sometimes on the outside. In its final version the picture solves a small, but interesting geometrical problem, and the spectator is drawn to puzzle it out. The two components of my interests, the subversive and the mathematical idea, coalesce in this picture.’ [2]

The arrangement of circles in Graphic Monument to Rudolph Bauer resonates with abstract paintings from the 1920s and 1930s by the German artist Rudolph Bauer, to whom the work is dedicated. [3] This reference highlights the precision and restraint of Hill’s approach to geometric abstraction.

The EXACTA portfolio was produced in an edition of 125, with twenty-five additional editions reserved for the artists involved. The second screenprint that Hill submitted for EXACTA is based on a painting from the beginning of his career and is part of the Sainsbury Centre collection (see 31566).

Lisa Newby, March 2021

[1] The EXACTA portfolio can be viewed on Fausta Squatriti’s website Edizioni d’arte – 3 (faustasquatriti.com)

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