ADRIAN HEATH (BRITISH 1920-1992)

ABSTRACT FORM WITH SPHERE
watercolour over pencil on paper
11 x 23cm; 4 1/4 x 9in
24.5 x 36.5cm; 9 3/4 x 14 1/2in (framed)

Offered for sale by order of Nedim Ailyan and Ben Stanyon of FRP Advisory the Joint Liquidators of The London Art Society LLP

Born in Burma, Heath attended Bryanston school in Dorset and took classes with Stanhope Forbes in Newlyn, Cornwall, but his time at the Slade in London was interrupted by the Second World War. Joining the RAF, he served as a tail gunner on Wellington Bombers. Taken prisoner after a failed mission he spent the majority of the war incarcerated at Stalag 383 in Bavaria. There he met fellow prisoner Terry Frost (1915-2003) whom he taught him to paint. Following an unsuccessful escape attempt, Heath was put in in solitary confinement during which he began to develop his abstract approach to form. After the War he finished his course at the Slade, and spent time in Paris and Carcassonne. In the late 1940s and early 1950s he lived in Cornwall where he met Ben Nicholson and William Scott in St Ives. He was also a close associate of both Victor Pasmore and Anthony Hill. Heath became the main link between the emerging St Ives School in Cornwall and the British Constructivists based in London. He helped to organise the first post-war show of abstract art at the Artists International Association Gallery in 1951, wrote on the origin and meaning of Abstract Art, and became the AIA's chairman (1954-1964). He served on the Arts Council's advisory art panel from 1964 to 1967.