Patrick Heron

by David Sylvester (Editor), A.S. Byatt (Contributor), Martin Gayford

A leading figure in twentieth-century British art, Patrick Heron has played a major role in the development of post-war abstract art. However, much of his work also reflects the influence of the extraordinary light, colour, shapes and textures to be found in the garden and landscape surrounding his house in Cornwall. He has vigorously pursued the ideal of an art of pure visual sensation. As far back as 1962 he explicitly claimed that 'colour is both the subject and the means, the form and the content, the image and the meaning, in my painting today'.
In this catalogue, published to accompany the major retrospective at the Tate Gallery, over seventy paintings by the artist are reproduced as colour plates. These works range from small oils to enormous canvases. Selected by David Sylvester, the curator of the exhibition, they trace the developments in Heron's style over sixty years.

192 pages, Paperback

First published July 30, 1998

About the author

Anthony David Bernard Sylvester CBE, (21 September 1924; London – 19 June 2001; London) was a British art critic and curator. During a long career David Sylvester was influential in promoting modern art in Britain, in particular the work of Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon.

Born into a well connected north-London Jewish family, Sylvester had trouble as a student at University College School and was thrown out of the family home. He wrote for the paper Tribune and went to Paris in 1947 where he met Alberto Giacometti one of the strongest influences on him. Though writing for a range of publications as a critic including The Observer and New Statesman the main thrust of his writing that direct response to the artwork was most important remained constant. Sylvester is credited with coining the term kitchen sink originally to describe a strand of post-war British painting typified by John Bratby. Sylvester used the phrase negatively but it was widely applied to other art forms including literature and theatre. During the 1950s Sylvester worked with Henry Moore, Freud and Bacon but also supported Richard Hamilton and the other 'Young Turks' of British pop art. This led him to become a prominent media figure in the 1960s. During the 1960s and 70s Sylvester occupied a number of roles at the Arts Council of Great Britain serving on advisory panels and on the main panel. In 1969 he curated a Renoir exhibition at the Hayward Gallery for which he was assisted by a young Nicholas Serota.