1920-1999
Patrick Heron was an English painter who was born in 1920 in Leeds and died in 1999 in Cornwall. He spent his childhood in St Ives and became a student at the Slade School of Fine Art from 1937 to 1939. After the Second World War, he moved to London and began painting again while working as an assistant in a pottery workshop in St Ives.
His art was deeply influenced by Braque’s exhibition at the Tate Gallery in 1946. His first solo exhibition took place in London, at the Redfern Gallery in 1947. In 1952, he attended the Biennial of Sao Paulo with 12 paintings. His initial figurative style began to move towards the abstract style under the influence of the American school of New York.
However his major influence throughout his artistic career was Matisse and his use of colour. In terms of form, his paintings are closer to European abstraction. In 1960, he presented his works at the famous Bertha Schaefer Gallery in New York. Shortly after that, he was an influential art critic for ‘New Statesman’ and ‘The Nation’, as well as the London correspondent of the New York magazine ‘Arts’ from 1955 to 1958. In 1998, a major retrospective of his work was exhibited at Tate in London.
Patrick Heron produced many prints, his first prints being created in the 1950s. Most of Patrick Heron’s prints were screen prints though he also created many lithography prints. All of Patrick Heron prints are original prints as Heron saw printmaking as a distinct medium to create artworks.
