Black & White Painting

Details

Sir Terry Frost, R.A. (British, 1915-2003)
Black & White Painting
signed 'Terry Frost' (on the reverse), signed again 'Frost' (on the stretcher)
oil on canvas
60 x 40 in. (152.5 x 101.5 cm.)
Painted in November 1959.

Provenance

with Waddington Galleries, London.
Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 9 November 1990, lot 251.
with Godson & Coles, London, where purchased by the present owner in May 2002.

Literature

Exhibition catalogue, Terry Frost, London, Belgrave Gallery, 1994, n.p., no. 18, illustrated.

Exhibited

Leeds, City Art Gallery, Gregory Memorial Exhibition, March - April 1960, no. 81.
New York, Bertha Schaefer Gallery, Terry Frost, October - November 1960, no. 15.
London, Belgrave Gallery, Terry Frost, October 1994, no. 18.

Special notice

Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent. These lots have been imported from outside the EU for sale using a Temporary Import regime. Import VAT is payable (at 5%) on the Hammer price. VAT is also payable (at 20%) on the buyer’s Premium on a VAT inclusive basis. When a buyer of such a lot has registered an EU address but wishes to export the lot or complete the import into another EU country, he must advise Christie's immediately after the auction.

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Lot Essay

In the autumn of 1960, Frost held his first one-man exhibition in New York at the Bertha Schaefer Gallery. Black & White Painting was shown at this exhibition, which was to be a seminal moment in the artist’s career. A second exhibition at the same gallery followed two years later and gave Frost enormous confidence and conviction in his artistic direction.

‘In New York they all came to my exhibition, de Kooning, Rothko, Klein, Newman, Motherwell. I was staying with Larry Rivers. Newman and Motherwell took me to their studios. I accepted it all as normal and they accepted me. They were all painters struggling to get somewhere like I was. They worked hard; they would sleep until noon, do eight or nine hours in the studio, and then starting at eleven at night proceeded to drink me under the table! Then we’d go at four in the morning and have breakfast at a Chinese restaurant’ (T. Frost quoted in E. Knowles (ed.), Terry Frost, Aldershot, 1994, p. 84).

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