Hilton and Constant in Correspondence

• Autores: Adrian Lewis
• Localización: Burlington magazine, ISSN 0007-6287, Vol. 140, Nº 1145, 1998, págs. 525-536
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • During 1953 Roger Hilton engaged in an extended correspondence with the Dutch artist Constant (Constant Nieuwenhuys, b.1920). A close relationship had developed between the two men as a result of Constant's stay in London for three months on a British Council grant and Hilton's return with him to Holland in February 1953, during which visit Hilton encountered the paintings of Mondrian. The correspondence extended from mid-March to November 1953 and included at least eleven letters, nine of which survive. It involved a dialogue on artistic ideas which is characteristic of Constant's international contact-making and sense of his role as an avant-garde catalyst of the wider cultural repositionings he deemed necessary to help effect the reconstruction of society.' While this exchange reflects - but cannot be said to have inflected - the dynamic of Constant's theorising, for Hilton it undoubtedly had a more fundamental impact. Indeed he was quite explicit about the decisive 'influence of Constant via Mondrian' at this point in his development.