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Terry Frost and Sandra Blow

The gallery will host a remarkable exhibition of the work of two St Ives artists, Terry Frost and Sandra Blow. The exhibition runs from the 8th to 28th May.

Sandra Blow RA (1925-2006) was one of the leading lights of the abstract art movement of the 1950s. Her works are often on a large scale and consist of abstract collages made up from cheap discarded materials such as sawdust, cut-out strips of old canvas, plaster and torn paper. The use of such materials is designed to create an expressive informality and promote a natural, organic feeling. Her works have a tactile as well as visual emphasis on surface, and her use of simple large geometric shapes lends a feeling of expansiveness and dynamism.

Sandra Blow was born in London in 1925, the daughter of a Kent fruit farmer whose orchards supplied retailers in Covent Garden. She left school at 15 and in 1940 entered St Martin's School of Art. Shortly after the Second World War, Blow studied at the Royal Academy Schools, but in 1947 ventured further afield and lived in Italy for a year, where she met Alberto Burri, who was a significant influence on her work for the rest of her career. Despite her youth, Blow was at the forefront of the abstract art movement in Britain during the 1950s. Following her first painting sale, to Roland Penrose (a founder of the Institute of Contemporary Arts), Blow's career took off. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, she regularly exhibited with Gimpel Fils, the leading London gallery whose association with St Ives artists like Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson and Peter Lanyon anticipated her move in 1957 to live for a year in a cottage at Zennor near St Ives. Blow was widely exhibited abroad throughout this time, establishing the international profile that her cosmopolitan outlook warranted. Participation in peripatetic displays of contemporary British art saw her work promulgated in Italy, Holland, Germany, the United States and later Australasia. In 1957 she featured in the first John Moores biannual exhibition in Liverpool and was included in the Young Artists Section at the Venice Biennale the following year. She won the International Guggenheim Award in 1960 and won second prize at the third John Moores exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery in 1961. In 1960, having returned to the capital, Blow acquired a large studio at Sydney Close in Kensington, where she worked for the next 24 years. In 1961 she started a 14-year stint teaching at the Royal College of Art. Although painters like Jennifer Durrant, Gillian Ayres and Joan Mitchell shared with Blow ambitious scale and expressive dynamism, she stands alone as the earliest and most original woman painter in Britain able to challenge the bar-room "macho" cult associated with free, informal abstract painting. In moving to St Ives during the mid-1990s, Blow came full circle, reinvigorating a Cornish art scene bereft of the glories she had sampled 35 years before. She exhibited locally but also fulfilled her obligations as a Royal Academician, participating in every Summer Exhibition at Burlington House, where she enjoyed a retrospective in 1994 at the newly built Sackler Galleries.

CCA Galleries had the great pleasure of working with Sandra for over seven years before her death and in that time have published many stunning silkscreen prints with collaged elements and textures and glazes. Her uncompromising approach pushed printmaking techniques to new boundaries with the introduction of Hessian, film and cloth; the prints are almost sculptural.

Sir Terry Frost RA (1915-2003) was a giant of British abstract Art. Born in Leamington Spa in 1915, Frost left school at the age of 14 and worked and worked at Curry’s Cycle shop and then Armstrong Whitworth in Coventry until the outbreak of war. He served in countries as diverse as Palestine and Greece, before being captured in 1941. Frost remained a prisoner until the end of the war, an experience that changed his outlook on life and introduced him to the possibilities of art. In prison camp in Bavaria Frost began to paint and draw, encouraged by young artist and fellow prisoner Adrian Heath. ‘In prisoner-of-war camp I got tremendous spiritual experience, a more aware or heightened perception during starvation, and I honestly do not think that awakening has ever left me’ On his return to Britain Frost moved to St. Ives in Cornwall, to be amongst the burgeoning artistic community there. Excluding brief stints in other locations, St. Ives and its local environs was where Frost lived and worked for the rest of his life. His work reflects the inspiration he found in the Cornish light, glittering seas and watery reflections. He attended the St. Ives School of Art before spending 1947-50 commuting to London in order to attend the Camberwell School of Art.

His early work was figurative; it was influence of Victor Pasmore at Camberwell combined with that of Ben Nicholson that led Frost to paint his first abstract painting on 1949. Frost worked as Barbara Hepworth’s assistant in 1951 and had his first solo exhibition at the Leicester Galleries in 1952. Frost taught at many institutions including the Bath Academy of Art (1952-4), Leeds University (who awarded him he was the Gregory Fellowship in 1954) and Reading University. In 1960 Frost had his first solo show in New York at the Barbara Schaefer Gallery, whilst there he met some of the leading American Abstract Expressionists, this experience encouraged him to start painting on a much larger scale.He was awarded the John Moore’s Prize in 1965, elected to the Royal Academy in 1992 and knighted in 1998. A retrospective of his work was held at the Royal Academy in 2000. Frost’s work reflects his gratitude and joie de vivre at having survived wartime incarceration; it is full of colour, light and the pleasure of existence ‘a sense of delight in front of nature’. Frost took his inspiration from nature; the sun, moon, water, boats and the female form are recurring motifs abstracted into sensuous circles and curves. These shapes are often coloured in dramatic blues, reds, oranges, yellows and blacks. Frost believed that the interplay of colour and shape could realise an event or image more successfully than imitation. He combined strict formal discipline with great expressive freedom and a natural sureness of touch.

For more information, or to be on our mailing list, please contact Steven Eccles on 01904 466488 or e-mail info@a-r-t.co.uk

Terry Frost

Product code : TF01

Blue Love tree
610 mm X 1002 mm
£ 2,950.00

Limited Edition Silkscreen Print

Terry Frost

Product code : TF02

Carlyon Sunshine
660 mm X 610 mm
£ 2,950.00

Limited Edition Silkscreen Print