HERON, PATRICK (British, 1920-1999)

A leading figure in twentieth century British Art, Heron played a major role in the development of post-war abstract art, much of his work also reflects the influence of the extraordinary light, shapes and textures to be found in landscape surrounding his home in Cornwall.
Heron trained at the Slade School of Arts, London in the late 30's under Schwabe and worked as an assistant in the Bernard Leach Pottery in 1944/45, where he met Nicholson and Hepworth, before moving to London.
He began exhibiting at the Redfern Gallery, London in 1947 and continued to show there until 1958. Though in 1952 Heron had experimented with abstract painting, it wasn't until 1956, when he moved to St. Ives, that he took up abstraction and in 1957 painted the first of his stripe paintings.
In 1958 he took over Ben Nicholson's former studio and began to introduce shapes that were to characterise his paintings in the 60's and 70's, where colour was to become a dominant concern.
He was awarded many prizes including Grand Prize in 2nd John Moores Liverpool Exhibition, 1959; Silver medal at the VIII Bienal de São Paolo, 1965; received Honorary Doctorates from the universities of Exeter, Kent and the Royal College of Art and was created CBE in 1977.
He held 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
The shape of colour, Patrick Heron, London, 1973;
Patrick Heron, ed. V Knight, J. Taylor/L. Humphries, 1998.
Patrick Heron, Byatt, Gayford & Sylvestre, Tate Gallery Publishing, 1998.