Dimensions
250 x 290 x 28mm
Patrick Heron (1920-99) was one of the leading artists of his generation, and an important figure in the development of post-war abstract art. Precociously talented, and strongly influenced by his entrepreneurial father and the optimistic modernism of the inter-war years, his work has, from its beginnings, maintained a rigorously sophisticated awareness of the great French twentieth-century figurative painters, especially Bonnard and Matisse. Heron's critical recognition of their significance to the development of non-figurative art enabled him to make important discoveries of his own as well as to understand more deeply than many of his contemporaries what could be learned from American abstract expressionism in its various manifestations. Working and living in Cornwall for most of his creative life, he was closely associated with the St Ives' artists, including Ben Nicholson, William Scott and Roger Hilton, whom he had championed so vigorously during his notable career as a critic in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Above all, Heron was obsessed by colour and light and in a long succession of beautiful paintings he pursued his vision of an art that would reclaim as its true subject "the reality of the eye".
This is the first book to examine in detail the progress of his career as an artist and set it in the context of his life and times.
Includes colour and black-and-white illustrations.
