Patrick Heron exhibition book (paperback)

Published to accompany the first major Patrick Heron retrospective in two decades, this lavishly illustrated publication shows the full evolution of Heron's vibrant abstract language, offering a unique opportunity to explore the extent of this modern master’s sense of scale, colour and composition. Thought-provoking texts will introduce and explain Heron’s visual strategies ranging over the full span of his career from his early work to his large-scale brightly coloured canvases of the 1990s. Patrick Heron (1920–99) held a unique position in twentieth-century art. As one of the first British artists to embrace abstraction, he played a major role in the development of postwar art. Heron welcomed the eruption of American art in the 1950s and was strongly affected by his first encounters with abstract expressionism yet European artists such as Matisse, Bonnard and Braque remained a fundamental influence on his work. This dialogue was played out in paintings that pursued the ideal of an art as pure visual sensation. Andrew Wilson is Senior Curator, Modern and Contemporary British Art and Archives, Tate Britain. Sara Matson is Exhibition and Displays Curator, Tate St Ives.