Beschreibung:

Adrian Heath (British, 1920-1992)Red Painting signed and dated 'Heath 62' (lower right) oil on canvas 91.8 x 96.2 cm. (36 1/8 x 37 7/8 in.)FootnotesProvenance With Hanover Gallery, London, where acquired by John Weeks, 1962, and thence by descent to the present owner Private Collection, U.K. Exhibited London, Hanover Gallery, Adrian Heath 12 December 1962-12 January 1963, cat.no.10 "Alterations are frequent, shapes amalgamate or divide, new colours are superimposed or old ones intensified. These alterations are caused by the reaction of the painter to the physical aspect of his work, and to the demands that they seem to make as well as to the mood that they create within him. It is the ability to develop and finally unite both mood and structure that gives to that work its meaning and identity." (Adrian Heath Introduction to Statements Exhibition, I.C.A., 1956, quoted in Adrian Heath Recent Paintings, Hanover Gallery, London, 1959). During the early 1960s Heath's work increased in scale, the largest seen to date, resulting from his reaction to the American abstract expressionists and in particular the work of Willem de Kooning and Robert Motherwell But unlike the Americans, Heath's paintings emerged from his preliminary drawings, either of landscapes or figures, and in this sense were not as spontaneous as they first appear. The period witnessed noticeable change in Heath's paintings, at a time when Hanover Gallery in London staged three separate exhibitions from 1959-1962. By the final instalment, softer more fluid forms had taken over from the geometric, hard-edged shapes Heath had built his early career on, as evident in the present work.