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. Rather than emphasising either colour, form, or facture, he made these 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 1950s, a way to both suggest figuration whilst still remaining ostensibly abstract. The reduction of the palette and rough texture of the painted surface in the paintings of 1959 and 1960 evokes the Cornish landscape with which he is so closely associated.