Terry Frost British, 1915-2003

Sir Terry Frost RA (born Terence Ernest Manitou Frost) is considered one of Britain’s most respected, successful and acclaimed abstract artists of the Twentieth Century, his career spanning seven decades. He was made an RA in 1992 and awarded a knighthood in 1998.

 

Born in Warwickshire in 1915 Frost first began to paint whilst interned in a POW camp during the Second World War, where he met fellow artist Adrian Heath. He later attended the St Ives School of Art in 1946 and went on studying at the Camberwell School of Art, London. In St Ives he became a member of the Penwith Society and was part of a close circle of emerging British modernists working with abstraction, including Roger Hilton, Patrick Heron, Peter Lanyon, John Wells and Bryan Wynter. Frost worked as an assistant to Barbara Hepworth in 1951 and had his first solo show in London the following year. Between 1952–1974 he taught at Leeds College of Art, Bath Academy of Art, Coventry Art College, Reading University, and the University of California. 

Frost has had numerous British and International solo exhibitions in his lifetime, including MoMA, Oxford, The ICA, a touring Arts Council retrospective, the Mayor Gallery, Tate St Ives, The British Council in New York and an RA retrospective in 2000. Hi work is held in numerous private and public collections around the world including the Tate, The MoMA and the National Gallery of Canada.