Sir Terry Frost RA British, 1915-2003

Frost was born on 13 October 1915 at Leamington Spa, Warwickshire. He left school at 14 but attended evening classes in art at the age of 16. During this time, he held a variety of jobs, including working in a cycle shop and the paint workshop of an aircraft factory.

 

In 1941, he was captured in Crete whilst serving as a Commando and interred at a prisoner of war camp in Bavaria, where he remained for the duration of the war. There, he met Adrian Heath, a Slade School alumnus who encouraged Frost to paint and helped to sharpen the emerging artist's sensibilities.

 

Returning to the UK in 1945, Frost enrolled first at the University of Birmingham, left for the Camberwell School of Art, and transferred to the St Ives School of Painting, all within one year. By the late 1940s, however, a new slate of avant-garden tutors had been installed at the Camberwell School, and they pushed Frost in a more experimental dimension. Their entreaties proved fantastically successful: By the late 1950s, Frost had become established as one of the great abstract painters of his day, exhibiting regularly in London and throughout the world. From the mid 1950s, he was also involved in academia teaching at various UK universities.

 

In 1974, Frost relocated permanently to Newlyn in Cornwall, where his love of the region proved a rich and continual source of inspiration. Elected a Royal Academician by the Royal Academy of Arts in 1992 and knighted in 1998, Sir Terry died on 1 September 2003.