Patrick Heron (British 1920-1999)
Heron is Britain's foremost Abstract painter. 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 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. Whilst 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.