Sir Terry Frost Prints and Multiples

'Love Tree' - A signed limited edition 44-colour silkscreen print with collaged elements by Sir Terry Frost RA. TERRY FROST RA [1915-2003]. Love Tree, 2002. Screenprint and colla...

Sir Terry Frost (British,1915-2003) : Thrust Signed & dated 'Frost 58' in pencil, lower right Titled on reverse Ink and wash on paper Provenance: Austin Desmond Fine Art, label verso . The Mayor Gallery, label verso Exhibition history: Austin Desmond 'Terry Frost Works on Paper, 1947 – 1972' Very few artists are successful in monotone as it is brutally visual so any weaknesses in the composition and/or the technique used are laid bare. This is a rare work and the monotone is totally appropriate for the title, ie simple, focused energy in the motion, and also focuses the viewers attention on the movement in the work which you can feel. Measures: Sheet height 24 cm, 9 ½ in., length 34.5 cm, 13 ½ in., In a moulded, ebonized frame. Frame height 46.5 cm, 18 ¼ in, length 56.5 cm, 22 ¼ in, In 1958 Frost was working from Porthmeor Studios in St Ives, having returned with his family from his teaching post in Leeds the previous year. Contemporary St Ives was again a hotbed of artistic activity, with Roger Hilton, Barbara Hepworth, Bernard Leach, Peter Lanyon, Patrick Heron and Brian Wynter all working in the town or nearby. Terry Frost's studio in St Ives, circa 1960. Frost was already an established figure, with two solo shows at the Leicester Galleries to his name and a third that year. In the same year he moved to Waddington Galleries, where he would have exhibitions regularly until 1978. The Tate purchased a first picture in 1959, and Frost's career was also poised to go international with his first American solo show, in 1960, at the Bertha Schaeffer Gallery in New York - a critical success which was attended by American heavyweights de Kooning, Rothko, Kline, Newman, and Motherwell. Frost characterised these years as 'a period of total confidence any mark I made seemed to be fine.' This work Thrust is strongly situated in the development of themes from Frost's Leeds years of 1954 to 1957 and before, to those of his work of the Sixties; and demonstrates motifs present in work from across his career. In the preceding years in Leeds he made a series of paintings which represented a movement through a landscape in abstract, for example Winter 1956, Yorkshire (Tate Collection). The fascination with motion and force and how these could be rendered in composition was first explored earlier in the decade, and extended through to later work such as the Laced, and Suspended Forms series. Here this enquiry is clearly present, both in the title Thrust and in the strong sense of propulsion of the two emphasised v or u forms towards the centre of the image. In all of Frost's work there exists a tension between abstraction and figuration - he never relinquishes to the complete abstraction advanced by Ben Nicholson and Naum Gabo and others. From the late fifties into the sixties Frost had a particular approach to the issue: he gave his apparently abstract forms coded meanings. The clearest example of this is the V-shaped wedge, signifying the female nude, of which Frost himself explains firstly the compositional properties: I used wedges a lot to tighten up form... If you've got tightness on a flat surface, the structure is a certainty, it can't fall apart. He goes on to explain the motif's significance to a painting's content: The chevrons and wedges are all part of the figure. The chevrons become nipples often, and then the penetration is a chevron as well. In paintings of the following years, from Black Wedge and White Nude of 1959, to Three Graces and Force 8 of 1960 the wedges are strongly defined. Here in Thrust the motif in development is less sharp, but nonetheless present and active and fundamental to the image; pressing in from two sides and providing a strong contraction of focus. Frost mentions the contemporary domination of Henry Moore and 'his lying-down things' as contributing to his desire to represent the reclining female form. Equally: There was always that side of me. I have to face the fact that I was a terrific flirt. I think Hilton and I were having arguments about the figure at that time, and Lanyon had done a few figure paintings, so there was a bit of a battle on. I was trying to stick to abstraction, but occasionally my romantic side, my love-making side, would take over. Terry Frost, Grey Entry, 1962 (Private Collection) Chevrons continue to appear into Frost's late work, and the more rounded but still directional C- and D-forms are also a dominant motif. Terry Frost, Red and Black on Blue, 1968 (Tate Collection) For an artist often associated with colour the subtlety with which he manipulates a work in black and grey tones is masterly. Ronnie Duncan, friend of Frost from the Leeds years, and collector, writes: Frost uses black with an uncanny authority and with the ability to evoke more colour from it than any other artist of our time, including Kline and Motherwell. (No wonder his favourite quotation from Rochester is “All colours are contained in black”). Paintings in Museums and Public Art Galleries : UK • Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums • Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal • Arts Council of Great Britain, London • Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery, UK • British Council, London • Bolton Museum & Art Gallery • Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum, UK • City Museum & Art Gallery, Bristol • City Museum & Art Gallery, Plymouth • Contemporary Art Society, London • Cornwall County Education Committee • Exeter University • Falmouth Art Gallery, England • Ferens Art Gallery, Hull • Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge • Glasgow University • Gulbenkian Foundation, London • Government Art Collection, London • Huddersfield Art Gallery • Leeds City Art Gallery • Leicestershire County Education Committee • Manchester City Art Gallery, England • National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh • National Museum of Wales, Cardiff • Northampton Museums & Art Gallery • National Portrait Gallery, London, UK • Norwich Museums, England • Peter Scott...

A visually stunning Sir Terry Frost silkscreen signed and numbered 41/125, depicting recurring motifs taken from nature and portrayed in abstract curves. Kemp 152. Picture 34" x 28" ...

Signed in pencil verso, numbered from the edition of 16. Printed on wove paper by Stoneman Graphics, Cornwall. Published by The Paragon Press, London. (Kemp 201)

Each signed in pencil verso, numbered from the edition of 16. Printed on wove paper by Stoneman Graphics, Cornwall. Published by The Paragon Press, London.

Signed and dated 1997. Stage Proof. On Arches paper printed to deckle edges. Published by Sir Terry Frost and printed by Alan Cox. Listed number 169 in Dominic Kemps' Catalo...

A visually stunning Sir Terry Frost silkscreen signed and numbered 41/125, depicting recurring motifs taken from nature and portrayed in abstract curves. Kemp 152. Picture 34" x 28"...

Etching and aquatint. Signed Stage Proof Published by Sir Terry Frost and printed by Stoneman Graphics on wove paper. Edition of 25. Mint condition and framed in contemporary b...

Screen print and collage in 8 colours with 3 collage elements on arches paper. A visually exciting Frost of good size, it's image 256 in Domin...

Published by Sir Terry Frost and printed by Stoneman Graphics on wove paper. Numbered 25/30 Signed verso by Lady Frost and stamped with the Terry Frost Estate Stamp. Mint condi...

Sharp and colourful, this Terry Frost screenprint and woodcut is signed, numbered 100/100 and dated in pencil. On velin arches blanc wove paper to deckle edges. Image 210 in Domini...

Signed dated and numbered 47/75 On heavy wove paper cut to edges and printed by the Royal College of Art, London Listed number 92 in Dominic Kemps' Catalogue Raisonne.