Biography
SIr Terry Frost (RA) 1915 - 2003
To become regarded as one of the most influential of mid to late twentieth British abstract artists, Terry Frost was born in Leamington Spa in 1915. After release from active service upon the end of the second world war, Terry studied art at Camberwell College of Art whilst also spending 1946 at the St Ives School of Painting, a move that was to guide his future artistic life and endeavours.
Upon returning to Camberwell, Terry Frost was tutored by bastions of British abstract art, including Victor Passmore and Ben Nicholson; the influence was clearly seen when Frost began to experiment with abstract painting from 1949.
For three years he exhibited with the St Ives School of Artists until in 1950 he was elected a member of the Penwith Society; he maintained a permanent connection with the Newlyn school. Already now settled in the town by 1951 he worked as an assistant to the sculptor Barbara Hepworth. He was joined there by Roger Hilton, where they began a collaboration in collage and construction techniques. Frost's first major exhibition was staged at the prestigious Leicester Galleries, London.
The decades which followed were to see Frost becoming one of the most regarded and influential of British abstract artists of the second half of the twentieth century. In 1992 he was elected a Royal Academician and he was knighted in 1998.
Works by Terry Frost are held within many prestigious public and private collections, including the Tate and Royal Academy of Arts.
Sir Terry Frost died in his adopted Newlyn in 2003 aged eighty seven