Contemporary Art Holdings
 


This exhibition included work by:
Sir Terry Frost RA, Sandra Blow & Bridget Riley.

14 July - 12 August 2006.
Exhibition Open Tuesday-Saturday 10am-5pm
   
Sir Terry Frost RA  
Terry Frost first began to paint as a prisoner of war. Returning to England, he received an ex-serviceman's grant and attended Camberwell School of Art, London from 1947 to 1950. He went on to teach at the Bath Academy of Art at Corsham Court from 1952, and was the Gregory Fellow at Leeds University 1954 to 1956, teaching at Leeds School of Art from 1956 to 1957. He was made Artist in Residence at the Fine Art Department of Newcastle University in 1964, became a full time lecturer at the Department of Fine Art, Reading University 1965, and went on to become Professor of Painting at the University of Reading from 1977 to 1981.
Sun & Boats
   
Frost's first one-man show was held at the Leicester Galleries in 1952. He continued to exhibit regularly in London and his first international one-man show was held in 1961 at the Bertha Schaeffer Gallery, New York. Frost had also participated in many group shows since 1953, and his work is held in many corporate and private collections throughout the world.
Swing Rhythm

Sun Tree

Terry Frost was elected Royal Academician
1992 and received a knighthood in 1998.
He lived and works in Newlyn, Cornwall.
   

Sandra Blow  

Sandra Blow’s innovative approach to painting during the 1950s assured her position as one of the leaders of the post war British Abstract Movement.

Born in London in 1925, Blow studied at St. Martin’s School of Art (1941-6) and then at the Royal Academy Schools before leaving for Italy. Alberto Burri introduced Sandra Blow to the potentials of collage and texture. From her mentor Blow distilled her own form of reductive abstract expressionism, preoccupied with space, matter and movement.

Throughout the fifties Sandra Blow enjoyed regular one man shows at Gimpel Fils, London and soon obtained international recognition. In 1978 Blow was elected Royal Academician and in 1994 the Royal Academy honoured her achievements with a solo show. In 2005, Sandra Blow celebrated her 80th birthday. To mark the occasion a book was launched about her life and work, co-inciding with a major retrospective at the Tate.

Brilliant
Corner lll


Crystal Gazing


Double Diamond
   

Bridget Riley  

Born in 1931, Bridget Riley is one of Britain’s best-known abstract artists. Since the mid-1960s she has been celebrated for her distinctive, optically vibrant paintings which actively engage the viewer’s sensations and perceptions, producing visual experiences that are complex and challenging, subtle and arresting.


Fold
©Bridget Riley
All Rights Reserved

 

Riley’s paintings exist on their own terms. Her subject matter is restricted to a simple vocabulary of colours and abstract shapes. These form her starting point from which she develops formal progressions, colour relationships and repetitive structures. The effect is to generate sensations of movement, light and space; visual experiences which also have a strong emotional and even visceral resonance.

Of her paintings, Riley has commented: ‘the eye can travel over the surface in a way parallel to the way it moves over nature. It should feel caressed and soothed, experience frictions and ruptures, glide and drift…One moment there will be nothing to look at and the next second the canvas seems to refill, to be crowded with visual events.’

Bridget Riley’s work falls into phases or groups in which it is possible to see certain formal ideas being worked through. At the same time, however, her work has not followed a single, straightforward line of development. Rather, its course resembles a kind of musical progression in which different themes are stated, explored, combined with other ideas, and progressively transformed.