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Terry Frost

6 of 13 portraits of Terry Frost

© National Portrait Gallery, London

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Terry Frost

by Ida Kar
2 1/4 inch square film negative, 1961
Purchased, 1999
Photographs Collection
NPG x132977

Sitterback to top

Artistback to top

  • Ida Kar (1908-1974), Photographer. Artist or producer associated with 1567 portraits, Sitter in 137 portraits.

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Kar photographed Frost in the year after his first solo show in New York, where he met and was inspired by American abstract artists.

Linked publicationsback to top

  • Freestone, Clare (appreciation) Wright, Karen (appreciation), Ida Kar Bohemian Photographer, 2011 (accompanying the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery from 10 March to 19 June 2011), p. 120 Read entry

    Frost left school at fourteen and did not begin painting until he became a prisoner-of-war in Germany during the Second World War. After the War, Frost, with his wife, Kathleen, and the first of their six children, relocated to St Ives, living in a caravan at Carbis Bay before moving to a cottage in Quay Street, where Kar later photographed him. Although he studied at Leonard Fuller's St Ives School of Painting, the artistic community was equally important in the development of his abstract style, as were his studies at Camberwell School of Art in London (1947-9). Between 1952 and 1954 he was the pupil of, and later assistant to, Barbara Hepworth, and became a member of the Penwith Society of Arts. During this period he mounted his first solo exhibition at the Leicester Galleries in London and exhibited in Patrick Heron's Space in Colour show at the Hanover Gallery. Kar photographed Frost, looking out at 'the sun, glittering water and boats' which influenced his work, in the year after his first solo show in New York, where he met and was inspired by American abstract artists. Frost was knighted in 1998.

Placesback to top

Events of 1961back to top

Current affairs

Peter Benenson's article The Forgotten Prisoners is published internationally, inspiring the founding of the human rights organisation, Amnesty International.
The philosopher and peace activist Bertrand Russell is imprisoned for inciting civil disobedience during a sit down demonstration at the Ministry of Defence and Hyde Park.
The farthing coin - used in Britain for the last 7 centuries - ceases to be legal tender.

Art and science

Rudolf Nureyev defects from the USSR fearing that the KGB would arrest him for being gay and for fraternising with foreigners. After seeking asylum in Paris he set up home in London at the Royal Ballet and began his famous partnership with Margot Fonteyn.
The satirical magazine, Private Eye is first published.

International

The East German government erects the Berlin Wall, ceasing free movement between East and West Berlin. The barrier prevented citizens of Soviet controlled East Germany from crossing the border into West Germany to work, or to defect.
Yuri Gagarin, the soviet cosmonaut, becomes the first man in space orbiting the earth on the 12th April.

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