ABSTRACT WITH RED AND ORANGE
signed with initials AH lower right
pencil, watercolour and bodycolour on paper
49 x 36cm/ 19 1/4 x 14 1/4in
59.5 x 47cm/ 23 1/2 x 18 1/2in (framed)

Executed circa 1960.

Property from a Deceased Estate, London

Born in Burma, after attending Bryanston school in Dorset, Heath took classes with Stanhope Forbes in Newlyn, Cornwall before enrolling at the Slade. During the Second World War he served with the RAF as a tail gunner on Wellington Bombers. Taken prisoner after a failed mission, he spent the majority of the war incarcerated at Stalag 383 in Bavaria. There he met fellow prisoner Terry Frost (1915-2003), and taught him to paint. Following an unsuccessful attempt to escape, Heath spent much of his time in solitary confinement during which he developed his abstract approach to form. After the War he finished his course at the Slade, and spent time in Paris and Carcassonne. In the late 1940s and early 1950s he lived in Cornwall where he met Ben Nicholson and William Scott in St Ives. He was also a close associate of both Victor Pasmore and Anthony Hill. Heath became the main link between the emerging St Ives School in Cornwall and the British Constructivists based in London. He helped to organise the first post-war show of abstract art at the Artists International Association gallery in 1951, wrote on the origin and meaning of Abstract Art, and became the AIA's chairman (1954-1964). He served on the Arts Council's advisory art panel from 1964 to 1967.