TERRY FROST: RED WITH BLACK ON THE SIDE
AUSTIN/DESMOND GALLERY
Until June 30
When the Bloomsbury gallery Austin/Desmond Fine Art, long-standing exhibitors at the British Art Fair, decided to run a major retrospective covering seven decades of Sir Terry Frost’s printmaking practice, there was little doubt as to who might curate it.
Terry Frost Red with Black on the Side 1970, Lithograph, 606 x 512 mm
On BFK wove paper, Signed and numbered in pencil, Edition of 75
Private art dealer Dominic Kemp has, since 2007, run Modern British Prints (a BAF exhibitor since 2010) and wrote the catalogue raisonné of the late St Ives artist’s sizeable ouvre in that medium, Terry Frost Prints (Lund Humphries, 2010).
Austin/Desmond, who have specialised in Modern British art since their foundation in 1979, counted Frost as a good friend, and over the years built up a big collection of his monotypes, linocuts, etchings and lithographs, many of them rare or never-seen-before, and including pieces rendered unique by hand colouring and collage.
“I have never sifted through a plan chest with more delight than when I was asked to look in the drawers marked ‘Frost’ in the Austin/Desmond stock room,” says Kemp. “There were pieces I recognised immediately and others I had never seen before. The most exciting thing was to discover unique examples of working proofs acquired directly from his studio and artist’s proofs he had saved to use as templates on which to add paint and collage, at a later date, in order to develop an idea.”
Works on display include The Lorca Portfolio, Frost’s magnum-opus response to the poems of Spanish poet Federico García Lorca, and three up-to-now unknown prints, including a self portrait and an enigmatic trial proof of a black sun and mermaid marked to be cut down for an edition that was never realised. Among Kemp’s favourites are a working proof of Moonship (1972) and Red with Black on the Side (1970), after which the show has been named.
“I especially love Terry’s Zurich lithographs of the late 1960s and 1970s,” says Dominic. “There’s a confidence, almost bravado, about them – they show an artist who has found his feet and is fearless to strive for more. I decided to title the exhibition after one of them because colour was of prime importance to Terry, and red and black, in particular, expressed so much for him. And in a way those two colours were him: red for passion with a streak of black for mischief on the side.”