Clinton Hill: 50 Years of Color & Line

Royale Projects is pleased to announce Clinton Hill: 50 Years of Color & Line opening Saturday, January 28, 2023 and running through April 1, 2023.

Having a significant career stretching from the 1950s to his death in 2003, Clinton Hill had a profound and lifelong interest in abstraction exploring the psychological impact of gender and sexuality through color and form. The works included in this exhibition bridge the gap from a time before the gay liberation movement when Hill’s practice employed covert investigations to a time of more open dialogue as he disclosed his sexual orientation with others. Although embodying a variety of styles, his paintings, mixed-media works on paper, and assemblages, are woven together through the thread of harmonious palettes and lyricism of line.

Born in Payette, Idaho, in 1922 and raised on a ranch near the Oregon border, Hill began painting as a teenager. After graduating from the University of Oregon he met his beloved life partner, Allen Tran, while serving together in the Pacific during World War II. They moved to downtown New York as a vanguard of artists was emerging, shifting the art world into radical new directions.

His formative years as an artist took place largely in the city through the 1950s and 1960s. He shares much with his contemporaries of the New York School, such as Willem de Kooning, and Mark Rothko, to whom he was a friend and studio assistant. His style characterized by an idiosyncratic use of color, expressionistic mark making, and the marrying of plane and solid geometry.

Hill traveled throughout the world, including India on a Fulbright Fellowship, Paris to attend L’Académie de la Grande Chaumière, and Italy to study at the Art Institute of Florence, which deeply influenced his work.

When building and remodeling a loft in Manhattan’s SoHo district, Hill discovered a new range of materials. He began to employ sheets of Fiberglas, vinyl, and wood, cutting into them, layering them, and even using discarded construction fragments as found materials. These assemblage works are reminiscent of geometric compositions and striking color combinations found throughout his career reflecting his skills as both a sculptor and painter.