Established in opposition to the prevailing influence of Abstract Expressionism, the American artist collaborative trio, Anonima Group, began in Cleveland, Ohio in 1960. While an undergraduate at Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, Francis Hewitt met master's student Ed Mieczkowski in the mid-1950s. The pair went on to teach a Dimensional Drawing course in 1960 at the Cleveland Institute of Art, where Mieczkowski had earned his bachelor of fine arts degree and they met Ernst Benkert. Together, the three men sought to define themselves against what they perceived to be the ego-driven world of Abstract Expressionism, with its privileging of automatic composition. By contrast, the Anonima Group approached their art practice from a more technical, decidedly scientific, perspective. While teaching the Dimensional Drawing course, Hewitt was working on a PhD in aesthetics and the psychology of perception at Case Western Reserve University. There was thus an academic and anti-commercial, verging on socialist, aspect to the work that Hewitt, Mieczkowski, and Benkert produced.
Although later grouped under the umbrella of Op art, this categorization does an injustice to the rigorous critical apparatus that the Anonima Group developed through its manifestos, proposals, and oeuvre. The vibrantly gridded, visually fluid compositions of Hewitt, Mieczkowski, and Benkert were not meant to be diverting optical curiosities, but rather creative sites for investigation into the nature of human perception and related sociopolitical contexts. Included in the Responsive Eye exhibition in 1965 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the work of the Anonima Group shared certain traits with that of American abstract artist Ad Reinhardt and the Russian Constructivists. While there were various artists making optical art in the 1960s, the Anonima Group is now recognized as the only American entity that coordinated its theoretical and artistic endeavors, similar to the Gruppo N, Zero Group, and GRAV in Europe. Yet, in light of Anonima's self-imposed separation from the commercial art world, the trio of artists were relatively underappreciated during their time.
The Anonima Group dissolved in 1971, but its impact on contemporary art was nonetheless considerable, not only given the creative and critical works that Hewitt, Mieczkowski, and Benkert generated, but because all three men had long teaching careers. Hewitt died in 1992, Benkert in 2010, and Mieczkowski in 2017. As a result, they were able to instill in generations of students an understanding of art appreciation beyond affective concerns, emphasizing perceptual psychology and arguing for the consideration of artworks as not merely expressions of individual styles or market commodities. The succinct artists' statement below from the trio crystallizes their position.
Anonima means anonymity for its members in regard to the world. Anonymity is not necessarily a virtue in itself, an ideal state to be achieved. It is the basis of any group which values the results of collaboration more than the individual distinction of the collaborators. Anonima has as a purpose within the world, the frustration of any attempts to misdirect, misrepresent, or misinterpret its activities. Anonima thus means no to Commercial Galleries, Biennales, Competitions, Prizes, Commissions, Mass Media Publicity, Critics, and Architects. At stake is the freedom to make the work, to exhibit the work, in whatever form and whenever it seems necessary, or simply to withhold it, following the rhythm of the artist and the development of his work, rather than the market of any of its more subtle extensions.
Francis Hewitt 1936–1992
Born in 1936 in Rutland, Vermont, Francis Hewitt was a consummate intellectual artist who explored the mind-bending potential of form and color in a multidisciplinary fashion. During his teenage years, Hewitt studied with local artist Stuart Eldridge and became the art editor for his high school yearbook as well as the editor and a cartoonist for the school newspaper. He first really delved into producing his signature abstract, geometric compositions while studying in the 1950s at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, where there was a decided focus on Bauhaus theory and practice. The curriculum blended artistic and scientific experimentation in a way that stimulated the nascent Op artist.
While at Carnegie, Hewitt befriended classmate Ed Mieczkowski and the two eventually taught a Dimensional Drawing course at the Cleveland Institute of Art in 1960, the same year they founded the Anonima Group with Ernst Benkert. Hewitt did postgraduate work at Oberlin College and earned a PhD in aesthetics and the psychology of perception at Case Western Reserve University. During the late 1960s, Hewitt taught at the Cooper Union and Pratt Institute in New York. In 1970, Hewitt returned to Vermont for good to teach at the University of Vermont in Burlington.
Following a 1971 retrospective on the Anonima Group at the University of Vermont, Hewitt constructed a large studio on 100 acres of land in rural East Corinth, near the capital Montpelier. In the 1970s and 1980s, Hewitt continued pushing the boundaries of color with various series that drew inspiration from the local scenery and Vermont's state flag. Prior to his passing in 1992, Hewitt was included in the 1988 traveling exhibition, Geometric Abstraction: A Cleveland Tradition, organized by the Cleveland Institute of Art. Today works by Hewitt are held in the collections of the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Museo de Artes Contemperaneo in Buenos Aires, and the Muzeum Sztuki in Lodz, Poland.
