Adrian Heath British 1920–1992
Heath was born in Burma and attended School in Dorset, southern England. In 1938, Adrian Heath studied art under Stanhope Forbes at Newlyn, Cornwall. In 1939 and 1945–47, he attended the Slade School of Art. He served in the RAF a tail gunner in Lancaster bombers in World War ll but spent almost the entire war as a prisoner of war during which period he became friends with and taught fellow POW Terry Frost to paint.
In 1949 and 1951, he visited St.Ives, Cornwall where he met Ben Nicholson. In the early 1950s, he became associated with Victor Pasmore and Anthony Hill. As such he became the main link between the emerging St Ives School and British constructivism. In 1953 Heath published ‘Abstract Painting: its Origins and Meaning’ a slim but perceptive volume appraising the development of abstraction by the early moderns. Adrian Heath painted abstract and semi-abstract pictures in oils and acrylic paints. He was also a collagist and constructivist.
His exhibitions included Musée Carcassone in 1948, and at the Redfern Gallery, London, from 1953, together with other galleries in London.
Heath 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, Wales (1977–80).
