Adrian Heath
1920-1992
Adrian Heath was a British painter born in Burma, who when he left school in Dorset in 1938 studied art under Stanhope Forbes in Newlyn. He then attended the Slade School of Fine Art in 1939. During World War II he was a prisoner of war during this time he met and taught Terry Frost. He returned to the Slade after the war between 1945–47 and first exhibited in France in 1948.
Between 1951 and 1953, Heath held exhibitions in his studio at 22 Fitzroy Street. The third exhibition included William Scott, Roger Hilton and Frost. The art critic Lawrence Alloway saw these artistic groupings as a new development in modern painting and in 1954 he published ‘Nine Abstract Artists’ which celebrated the advancement of abstract painting in works by Heath and his associates. Heath also published an essay in 1953 ‘Abstract Art: Its origins and meaning’ .
Heath had one man and group exhibitions in London (particularly at the Redfern Gallery) and across Europe from 1953 until his death. He painted abstract and later semi-abstract pictures in oil and acrylic but was also a collagist, depicting motifs from nature and the figure. He made a series of constructions between 1953-54.
Heath was Chairman of the Artists International Association (1954-64). He taught at Bath Academy of Art (1955–76) and the University of Reading (1980–85). He was artist in residence at the University of Sussex in 1969 and a senior fellow at the Glamorgan Institute of Higher Education (1977–80). He died in France in 1992.
His work is to be found in numerous collections including the Arts Council of Great Britain, the British Museum, The Tate Gallery, The Victoria & Albert Museum and the Brooklyn Museum in New York.