Patrick Heron (British 1920-1999)
Heron is Britain's foremost Abstract painter.
At the young age of thirteen, Heron began to paint in a Cézanne-influenced style. Shortly after this he was asked to make designs for Cresta Silks and started attending The Slade School of Art. During World War II Heron registered as a conscientious objector and worked as an agricultural labourer for three years, then at the Leach Pottery at St Ives between 1944-45, where he met Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth and many other leading British artists of the St Ives School.
Heron's work from the 1940s shows the influences of Braque and Matisse, which proved a sound painterly basis for his progress into Abstraction during the early 1950s. The 1946 George Braque exhibition at the Tate Gallery deeply impressed him and he wrote an essay on Braque for The New English Weekly. Then up to 1953 he spent time in Europe visiting Paris, Provence and Italy. Heron visited Braque in his Paris studio and presented him with the New English Weekly article.
Upon his return to the United Kingdom, the effect on Heron of the 1956 landmark Tate Gallery exhibition on the New York Abstract Expressionists, combined with his move to Eagles Nest, overlooking the cliffs at Zennor in Cornwall, became the pivotal point in the transformation into his now characteristic language of interlinking forms and balance of colour and space. Whereas Heron's deepest influences for his use of colour remained Matisse, his form connects him to the pure Abstraction of European lineage. In 1998, a major retrospective of Heron's work was organised by the Tate Gallery, London.
He was awarded many prizes including Grand Prize in 2nd John Moores Liverpool Exhibition, 1959; Silver medal at the VIII Bienal de SPaolo, 1965; received Honorary Doctorates from the universities of Exeter, Kent and the Royal College of Art and was created CBE in 1977. He has had over sixty one-man exhibitions in twelve countries.
Public collections include
Aberdeen Art Gallery, Aberdeen
Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide
Arts Council of Great Britain, London
British Museum, London
Galouste Gulbenkian Foundation, London
Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon
Montreal Museum of Fine Art, Montreal
National Portrait Gallery, London
Peter Stuyvesant Foundation, Amsterdam
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh
Tate Gallery, London
Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo
Victoria & Albert Museum, London
Bibliography
Mel GOLDING, Patrick Heron, Phaidon Press Ltd, 1995
Vivien KNIGHT, Patrick Heron, J. Taylor/L. Humphries, 1998
Martin GAYFOD, David SYLVESTER, Patrick Heron, Tate Gallery Publishing, 1998
Andrew WILSON, Patrick Heron: Early and Late Garden Paintings, Tate Publishing, 2001
Michael McNAY, Patrick Heron, Tate Publishing, 2002
Solo Exhibitions
1947, Redfern Gallery, London; Downing's Bookshop, St Ives
1948, Redfern Gallery, London
1950, Redfern Gallery, London; Bristol City Art Gallery
1951, Redfern Gallery, London
1952, City Art Gallery, Wakefiled and touring; Retrospective, Midland Group Gallery, Nottingham
1953, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford; II Bienal de So Paulo and touring
1954, Redfern Gallery, London
1955, Simon Quinn Gallery, Huddersfield
1956, Redfern Gallery, London
1958, Redfern Gallery, London
1960, Bertha Schaefer Gallery, New York; Waddington Galleries, London
1962, Bertha Schaefer Gallery, New York; Hume Tower, Edinburgh
1965-67, VIII, Bienal de So Paulo
1967, Dawson Gallery, Dublin; Retrospective, Richard Demarco Gallery, Edinburgh; Retrospective, Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo; Waddington Galleries, London
1968, Retrospective, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford; Waddington Galleries, London; Park Square Art Gallery, Leeds; Bear Lane Gallery, Oxford
1970, Waddington Fine Arts, Montreal; Mazelow Gallery, Toronto; Rudy Komon Gallery, Sydney and touring; Waddington Galleries, London; Gallery Caballa,Harrogate Festival of Arts & Science