Adrian Heath

Adrian Heath (1920-1992) was born in Burma. In 1938, he studied art under Stanhope Forbes at Newlyn before studying at the Slade School of Art from 1945-47. In the Second World War, he served in the RAF as a tail gunner, but spent almost the entire war as a prisoner of war in Bavaria. During this period he became friends with, and taught, fellow prisoner of war Terry Frost to paint, and due to the limitations they were under they made paint by grounding up earth pigments in oil from tins of sardines provided by the Red Cross.

In 1949 and 1951, he visited St Ives in Cornwall, where he met Ben Nicholson. In the early 1950s, he was also associated with Victor Pasmore and Anthony Hill, and through these artists he became the main link between the emerging St Ives School and British Constructivism.

He exhibited at the Musée Carcassonne in 1948, and at the Redfern Gallery, London, from 1953, together with other galleries in London. His work is in the collections of the Tate Gallery and the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC. 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) and was also a member of 56 Group Wales from 1978 to 1982.

His work was mainly abstract and semi-abstract pictures in oils and acrylic paints, however he also made collages and constructions.