Sir Terry Frost RA

Terry Frost (1915-2003), whose first job was in a bicycle shop aged 14 and only started painting during his time as a prisoner of war in Germany, developed into one of Britain’s leading post-war abstract artists. His contribution to life and art in Cornwall was immense.

He came to St Ives in 1946 and studied at the St Ives School of Painting under Leonard Fuller, before attending Camberwell School of Art where his interest for abstraction first emerged. Although based in St Ives and later Newlyn, he was also an enthusiastic and talented tutor, teaching art in Leeds, Bath, Newcastle, Coventry and Reading, before returning to Cornwall for good in 1974.

When he first left college, he was taken on as an assistant to Barbara Hepworth for her Festival of Britain sculpture, ‘Contrapuntal Forms’. He was also good friends with Ben Nicholson, taking on Porthmeor Studio 4 next door to him in 1951, and they visited each other on a daily basis to offer criticism and advice. Frost’s paintings soon evolved into the characteristic shapes of elipses, circles, and semi-circles inspired by the boats and buoys in the harbour, which Ben Nicholson told him would last him for life.

Terry Frost was elected a Royal Academician in 1992 and knighted in 1998.