SIR TERRY FROST

Born in Leamington Spa, Terry Frost left school at the age of fourteen to work in a cycle shop. He served as a commando during WW2 in various theatres of war, and was captured in Crete and imprisoned. He learnt to paint and draw while in Stalag 383. He later said that his years in prison provided a “tremendous spiritual experience, a more aware or heightened perception during starvation”.

After the War, he was much influenced by Ben Nicholson and Victor Pasmore while attending Camberwell School of Art, and moved to St Ives where a number of artists were living. He became an assistant to the sculptor Barbara Hepworth, and developed his own signature style of painting and print making over the next five decades.

Like many artists there, his art became increasingly abstract and less figurative. But the shapes and colours of the natural world continued to infuse his art, which is dominated by his exuberant emotional response to his surroundings.

As one of the leading abstract artists of his generation, he was elected to the Royal Academy in 1992, and was knighted in 1998. He was a hugely popular teacher and remains a much loved artist. His work is held by numerous collections and galleries throughout the world.

“In this painting [Blue Movement], I was trying to give expression to my total experience of

that particular evening. I was not portraying the boats, the sand, the horizon or any other subject matter, but concentrating on the emotion engendered by what I saw. The subject-matter is in fact the sensation evoked by the movements and the colour in the harbour. What I have painted is an arrangement of form and colour which evokes for me a similar feeling”. Terry Frost.