Terry Frost Lace I, 1968

“I think I was trying to tighten the form…I had two semi-circles of half semi-circles collated on and they always made a tension between each other, so much so that I decided to tighten them up. I laced them up and pulled them tight so they could not escape this tension. Like sails pulling against the wind and my grandmother’s stays.” -  Sir Terry Frost, RA 

In the 1960s, Terry Frost (1915-2003) created a series of ‘laced’ works in gouache, on canvas and in lithograph, based on his renowned collages of overlapping concentric and semi-circular forms. With pieces from this series held in the collection of Tate amongst numerous institutions, these works developed Frost’s exploration of formal tension, physically binding shapes together through lacing, introducing leather as a medium and strategic tool. The resulting compositions connected abstraction simultaneously to sails under strain and the structure of corsetry, transforming geometric relationships into images charged with movement and physical force.