SIR TERRY FROST, R.A. (1915-2003)

Painted in 1959, White Wedge is an assured example of Terry Frost’s growing confidence in the late 1950s at a time when his international reputation was on the rise. The friends Frost made, including Victor Pasmore and Roger Hilton, and the influences he received, assisting Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson, led him in the direction of abstraction. However, rather than foregrounding either colour, form, or facture, he made these formal elements interact to form a composite and loosely evocative abstraction using wedge and half-circle shapes to divide the painted canvas.

Frost devised, as in his work earlier in the decade, a way to both suggest figuration whilst still remaining ostensibly abstract. The reduction of the palette and rough appearance of the painted surface in the paintings of 1959 and 1960 showcase Frost’s ability to render spatial and synesthetic sensations, both associative and tactile. White Wedge reflects this practice, the browns and neutral greys and visible brushstrokes evoking the Cornish landscape in which the artist was working.