Sir Terry Frost (British, 1915-2003) |
 |
|
One of the best-loved figures in British art, Terry Frost was encouraged
to paint in a prisoner-of-war camp by fellow prisoner and artist Adrian
Heath, he moved to St Ives in Cornwall after the war, studying at the
St Ives School of Painting. From 1947 to 1950 he attended the Camberwell
School of Art, which, with Heath's studio, was the focal point of Constructivist
tendencies in England. Frost followed their concern for proportion and
systematic procedures but he soon rejected their historicist notions
of a necessary development towards abstraction from two to three dimensions
and the potential relationship between painting, architecture and design.
His first one-man show was held in London at the Leicester Galleries
(1952), led to paintings that evoked the features of the Yorkshire countryside
and harsh snowy winters. He returned to St Ives in 1956 but spent the
decade from 1964 teaching at Reading University, before settling back
at Newlyn in 1974.
|
 |
|
|
|
|
Signed Card.
4to - over 9¾" - 12" tall.
c. 2000
card inscribed by Terry Frost with a small pen and ink sketch of the
sun over the sea.
SOLD
| |
|
|
|
|
[002309] Gooding, Mel. Terry Frost: Act
& Image Works on Paper Through Six Decades.
London: Belgrave Gallery, 2000.
First Edition.
4to - over 9¾" - 12" tall. Cloth.
SIGNED BY TERRY FROST WITH A FULL PAGE PEN AND INK DRAWING OF A SPIRAL
FORM, to the f.f.e.p. Portrait of the artist, full-page colour illustrations
of works on paper, bright red cloth, spine lettered in silver, pictorial
dust-jacket. A fine copy of this indispensable book on Terry Frost illustrating
works on paper from 1943-1999. This copy is signed by the artist and
has a large full-page pen and ink drawing of an abstract spiral form
by the artist. A beautiful copy.
SOLD
| |
|
|
|
|
Laced Ovals
collage c. 1990 with pen and ink on paper and card
three superimposed ovoid shapes, with central fold along the horizontal,
mounted on black card with cross hatched additions in pen and ink by
the artist
signed on reverse by the artist in black pen, with drawing of sun
27.5 x 25.5 cm.
SOLD
A striking an elegant composition, wholly typical
of Frost's bold collages. “This quality of the ‘unfinished' in Frost's
drawing is never manneristic; it is, rather, a function of a native
urgency, of an imperative to discover an image or quickly register
a visual idea, or to put down without delay the notation that might
catch a fugitive idea, keep it in sight. Many drawings and small collages
of this sort are immediate and spontaneous improvisations on a theme
presently being explored on a larger scale in a painting; sometimes
they may be the first intimations of a new imagery soon to find deployment
in larger and more complex works” (Mel Gooding, Terry Frost: Act
& Image. Works on paper through six decades , London &
St. Ives, Belgrave Gallery, 2000, p. 10).
Collage is a technique that emerged in Frost's
work in the 1960s and recurred with increased frequency from the 1970s
until his death. It was a vital shorthand within his repertoire, opening
up new worlds of visual experimentation and spontaneity. Frost's use
of collage extended to both works on canvas and on paper, adding an
impromptu and playful dynamic to them. The compositions Bikini from
the early 1970s and Moonlight Becomes You from 1978, both playing
on the female form, exemplify another quality that collage brings to
Frost's work: that of a wonderful visual humour and whimsy, as well
as the artist's ability to convey complex three-dimensional forms and
spatial relationships through the use of two-dimensional accreted elements. The ovoid forms evident in the present collage,
and the use of reductive black and white, are another important aspect
of Frost's works from the 1980s and 1990s. In Untitled from
the early 1980s, executed in ink and acrylic on paper, these ovoid forms
are interlinked like a paper chain, forming vectors where the flattened
rings intersect. A strong visual poetry and a heightened compositional
dexterity are powerfully evident in such works and the deployment of
collage is one of the keys to their success.
|
|
