Untitled, April 1970

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, Whitehall

Sir Terry Frost was known for his geometric abstractions. This work mines some of the tropes he used extensively in his career: half-circles and rectangles. He worked quite often in colour, however for some time in the 1950s he focused on black and white paintings, often inspired by the sea and scenes of boats at St Ives, where he lived. At that time, just after the war, he was not able to afford colour paints. While this work is painted much later, it resonates with some of his earlier work in black and white, and brings to mind ideas of a seascape. The rectangles with the clear brushstrokes of watercolour paint, offer a sense of the horizon lines. The depth of perspective conjured up by his curved lines gives the impression of a view into the distance, while also bringing to mind a sense of, and the movement of, the sea. 

Sir Terry Frost was born in Leamington Spa. He spent four years as a prisoner of war during the Second World War, during which time he met, and was taught by, the artist Adrian Heath. After the war, he studied at Camberwell School of Arts, London and went on to settle in St Ives in 1950, where he worked as assistant to Barbara Hepworth. In 1951, after meeting the artist Roger Hilton, he began to use construction and collage in his work and over the next decade became one of Britain’s leading abstract painters. In 1952 Frost’s first major exhibition in London led to several decades of solo and group exhibitions around the world. In 1960 he visited the USA and met leading Abstract Expressionists Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman, and art critic Clement Greenberg. Knighted in 1998 for his contribution to British art, Frost continued to make paintings and prints as well as designing ceramics and textiles right up to his death in 2003.

Places

Subjects

crescent, abstract

Materials & Techniques

paper (as artists material), gouache (as artists material), gouache (as object name)

Artist

Sir Terry Frost (1915 - 2003)

Title

Untitled, April 1970

Date

April 1970

Medium

Gouache on paper

Dimensions

height: 7.50 cm, width: 57.00 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from Waddington Galleries, December 1971

Inscription

br: Frost 70

GAC number

9429