Patrick Heron CBE (1920 -1999) was a painter, printmaker, designer, and author who made noteworthy contributions to the development of abstract art. Born in Yorkshire in 1920, he attended the Slade School of Art in London. Employing the term “non-figurative” to describe his exploration of vibrant colour, he believed that all art could be considered abstract. Heron worked to make all areas of a composition into areas of equal importance through his sophisticated use of colour, turning the English painting convention of narrative, figurative painting on its head.
Heron won the Grand Prize at the John Moores Prize Exhibition in Liverpool in 1959 and the silver medal at the São Paulo Art Biennial in 1965. A major retrospective exhibition of his work was held at Tate Britain in 1998. More recently, Heron had a large solo exhibition at the Tate St. Ives, Cornwall in 2018.
His work is in a number of important collections, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, The National Portrait Gallery in London, and many others.