Exposition Art Blog: British Abstract Painting
Showing posts with label British Abstract Painting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label British Abstract Painting. Show all posts

Alan Davie

 

 Alan Davie (1920–2014) Drawing inspiration from references ranging from Abstract Expressionism to global traditional art, Alan Davie’s eclectic oeuvre reflects his interest in Zen Buddhism, Jungian psychoanalysis, and jazz music. Davie represented Britain at the São Paulo Bienal in 1963, and retrospectives of his work were held at the Barbican Centre in 1993 and Tate St Ives in 2003. Davie was awarded a traveling scholarship from his alma mater Edinburgh College in 1941, but his plans were delayed until the end of World War II. Following his military service, he traveled to Italy in 1948, where he encountered works by Renaissance masters in Florence and Arezzo; in Venice he was introduced to Peggy Guggenheim’s preeminent collection of American modernism. Particularly influenced by Jackson Pollock’s intuitive style of painting, Davie sought to free himself from premeditated markmaking. His process was inspired by improvisational jazz and his interest in Carl Jung’s vision of a collective unconscious. Depicting archetypal symbols and recurring shapes, his work conjures primal, mystical associations.

 













 


Terry Frost - Light, Colour and Shape

Sir Terry Frost (born Terence Ernest Manitou Frost) (13 October 1915 – 1 September 2003) was an English abstract artist, who worked in Newlyn, Cornwall. Frost was renowned for his use of the Cornish light, colour and shape to start a new art movement in England. He became a leading exponent of abstract art and a recognised figure of the British art establishment.As soon as war was over he went to Birmingham College of Art, where he met Barrie Cook. However Frost quickly assumed that the action was elsewhere. At first attended Camberwell School of Art under Leonard Fuller. The following year, 1946 he removed for a year out to St. Ives School of Painting where his first solo exhibition was held in 1947 at G.B. Downing's bookshop, before returning to London and that autumn the Camberwell School of Art under Victor Passmore, Ben Nicholson and William Coldstream bringing him to paint his first abstract work in 1949. For three years he exhibited with the St Ives Society of Artists until in 1950 he was elected a member of the Penwith Society; he maintained a permanent connection with the Newlyn school. Already 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.His first exhibition was the Leicester Galleries in the heart of London's West End. Frost's academic career included teaching at Bath Academy of Art, the Coventry Art College and was appointed on the recommendation of Herbert Read as the Gregory Fellow on Painting (1954-1956) at the University of Leeds. There he befriended the painter Stass Paraskos, who would later invite Frost to spend time working and teaching in Cyprus at the Cyprus College of Art.Later he became Artist in Residence and Professor of Painting at the Department of Fine Art of the University of Reading.At the Barbara Schaeffer Society in New York, 1960 he put on his first exhibition in USA. There he met many of American abstract expressionists, including Marc Rothko who, along with his wife Mel, became great friends. The success contributed to an award of the John Moore Prize for 1965. In 1992 he was elected a Royal Academician and he was knighted in 1998. A retrospective of his work was held in 2000. Wikipedia