Adrian Heath
Publisher: Lund Humphries Publishers, Limited
Published: 2012
Language: eng
Number of pages: 216
ISBN-13: 9781848220386
Subjects: Painting, british
Description: This is the first book on British abstract painter Adrian Heath (1920-1992), who was a member of the Constructivist circle and a pioneer of abstraction in Britain in the post-war period. Adrian Heath was born in Burma and studied art under Stanhope Forbes in Newlyn before attending the Slade School of Fine Art in 1939. In a German prison camp during the Second World War he was an active escapee and gave lessons in oil-painting to Terry Frost, who became his lifelong friend and described him as 'the bravest man I ever knew'. He returned to the Slade after the war and became a pivotal member of the circle of abstract artists round Victor Pasmore in the late 1940s, which included Mary and Kenneth Martin and Anthony Hill. The three exhibitions of art and design held in Heath's Fitzroy Street studio in 1952/3 have become legendary in the history of post-war British modernism, and he is an important link between the abstract painters of St Ives and their Constructivist London counterparts. His house and studio in Charlotte Street are celebrated as convivial meeting places for discussion between artists of all persuasions.