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In Storage

Patrick Heron (1920-1999)

BLACK AND DULL GREEN WITH TWO CIRCLES : SEPTEMBER 1962

Patrick Heron was a conscientious objector during the war and after working on the land he was sent to help out at the Bernard Leach Pottery in St Ives. After the war he returned to Cornwall each summer before settling at Zennor in 1956. That year he saw American Abstract Impressionist paintings in London and was excited by their rawness, simplicity and scale. This gave him the confidence to abandon representation and concentrate on applying colour to his canvases.

Heron began creating large works dominated by fields of colour and arrangements of squares and discs. In 1962 he said 'Colour is both the subject and the means; the form and the content; the image and the meaning'. These were works of pure abstraction, Heron concentrating on structure, surface and colour for its own sake rather than trying to imitate subjects from the real world.

Mediumoil on canvas
Date1962
Dimensions763mm x 1220mm
Acquisition NumberSOTAG : 1972/3
Credit LinePresented in 1972 by the Contemporary Art Society