Composition (Hillhead), 1954
Oil on hardboard
Signed, titled and dated verso and inscribed 'July 1954, Hillhead'

Provenance
Redfern Gallery, London
Private Collection
91.5 x 122.0 cm (36 x 48 inches)

Provenance:
Redfern Gallery, London
Private Collection

Exhibition History:
Redfern Gallery, London

Notes:
Adrian Heath first studied under Stanhope Forbes at Newlyn School of Art in 1938 and later at the Slade School of Fine Art in 1939. He met Terry Frost in a Bavarian prisoner of war camp and
famously inspired him to paint before returning to the Slade to complete his studies between 1948 - 49. It was during this period that he met Kenneth and Mary Martin and Victor Pasmore, exhibiting with the London Group in 1949. Later he met Ben Nicholson in St Ives. Heath is now thought of as a link between the St Ives School of abstraction and the London Constructivist Group of which he was a key early member. In 1951 he began to explore abstraction using a
method called harmonious proportion. The method involved starting with a harmonious rectangle and rotating cut out areas of thin card to arrive at a harmonious composition. The Tate
owns White Collage 1954 which indicates the use of this method - as does Hillhead 1954.
In 1954 he was included in Lawrence Alloway’s ground breaking publication Nine Abstract Artists in the same year that Hillhead was painted. Heath was later included in the well documented
exhibition This is Tomorrow at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1956. Heath was a noted teacher, especially at Bath Academy of Art 1955-76. He exhibited in France, Scandinavia and Germany as
well as in Britain. His work is collected by many public galleries in Europe and America and in London at Tate, the Arts Council of Great Britain and the Victoria & Albert Museum
POA