Terry Frost U.K., 1915-2003
Sir Terence Ernest Manitou Frost RA (13 October 1915 – 1 September 2003) was a British abstract artist, who worked in Newlyn, Cornwall. Frost was renowned for his use of the Cornish light, colour and shape. He became a leading exponent of abstract art and a recognised figure of the British art establishment.
Following the end of WWII, Frost studied at Birmingham College of Art, where he met fellow artist Barrie Cook. Frost later attended Camberwell School of Art under Leonard Fuller. The following year, 1946 he moved for a year out to St. Ives School of Painting where his first solo exhibition was held in 1947 at G.B. Downing's bookshop, before returning to London and that autumn the Camberwell School of Art under Victor Pasmore, Ben Nicholson and William Coldstream bringing him to paint his first abstract work in 1949. For three years he exhibited with the St Ives Society of Artists until in 1950 he was elected a member of the Penwith Society; he maintained a permanent connection with the Newlyn school. Already settled in the town by 1951 he worked as an assistant to the sculptor Barbara Hepworth. He was joined there by Roger Hilton, where they began a collaboration in collage and construction techniques.
His first exhibition was the Leicester Galleries in the heart of London's West End. Frost's academic career included teaching at Bath Academy of Art, the Coventry Art College and was appointed on the recommendation of Herbert Read as the Gregory Fellow on Painting (1954-1956) at the University of Leeds. There he befriended the painter Stass Paraskos, who would later invite Frost to spend time working and teaching in Cyprus at the Cyprus College of Art.
In 1958 while still living in Leeds and teaching at Leeds School of Art he joined the London Group. He moved to St Ives, and then in 1963 to Banbury, where his house at 2 Old Parr Street now sports an Oxfordshire Blue Plaque.Later he became Artist in Residence and Professor of Painting at the Department of Fine Art of the University of Reading.
At the Barbara Schaeffer Society in New York, 1960 he put on his first exhibition in USA. There he met many of American abstract expressionists, including Marc Rothko who, along with his wife Mel, became great friends. The success contributed to an award of the John Moore Prize for 1965. In 1992 he was elected a Royal Academician and he was knighted in 1998. A retrospective of his work was held in 2000.
-
Terry FrostValentine - Blues and Purples, 1999Collage and acrylic
hand-signed and dated 99 (lower right); further hand-signed, dated 99 and dedicated (verso)32 x 31 cm
40.5 x 41 cm (framed) -
Terry FrostSuspended Red, Yellow and Black, 1987Original Screenprint, on heavy wove paper cut to the
edges, signed and dated by the artist in pencil. An Archive number 82.102
is written in pencil verso.Sheet: 79 x 59 cm
Framed: 100.7 x 80.2 cm
Edition of 75
-
Post-War/Modern
Art at the OWO 8 Oct 2024 - 31 Jan 2025Dellasposa Gallery is delighted to present a new exhibition at The OWO Residences by Raffles in London. This historic venue, once the former War Office, now serves as a unique...Read more -
Modern Mavericks
5 - 21 Sep 2019Dellasposa Gallery is pleased to present Modern Mavericks. The exhibition explores the work of Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse and the indelible mark they left upon British modernism through the artists Patrick Heron, Patrick Caulfield, and William Scott.Read more
Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse stand at the heart of modernism as they cross the frontier between figurative art and abstraction in their unique quests for new aesthetic expression. The exhibition traces the ways the British artists engaged with a much deeper and more varied appreciation of the modern masters than is widely understood, by drawing a comparison with Picasso's metamorphosis of style and Matisse's use of colour and pure line.
Formed between dialogue of European pictorial tradition and culture of modernity, the British artists were inspired by the avant-garde while reinterpreting visual language to express their own progressive form of abstraction. Among the British artists for whom the work of Picasso and Matisse proved significant stimulus, Terry Frost, Patrick Heron, Patrick Caulfield, and William Scott - all associated with St Ives in Cornwall - emerged as a dynamic force.
Picasso was a maverick in every sense - his evolution of subject and style was never absorbed by one influence. While he pioneered many of the most significant movements in the twentieth, his aesthetic and profound sensibility was so unique and distinctive that it still remains triumphant today. Yet without Picasso - or the equally brilliant Matisse - the story of British modernism that follows would have been quite different.
Modern Mavericks presents a collection of original limited edition prints, works on paper, and paintings. The exhibition is curated with the view that works of art are influenced not only by more extensive cultural and philosophical developments but also by idiosyncratic qualities and disposition of the artist whose unique aesthetic eye informs what they create.
