Born in Philadelphia, John Ernest moved to Europe in 1946 to paint. Prior to this he had been a cartoonist in America. He arrived in London in 1951 - seeing the London Groups first exhibition Abstract Paintings, Sculptures, Mobiles at the A.I.A Gallery. In 1952 he joined St Martins School of Art to study sculpture meeting Kenneth Martin in 1953. From 1956 he was a teacher at Bath Academy of Art in Corsham.

He had experimented with abstract work in the late forties but it wasn’t until his arrival in London and his meeting with Victor Pasmore that he began to exhibit as a constructionist, his first group exhibition being Artist v. Machine in London in 1954. This was Ernest’s first use of machine made materials. He says of this period of development: ‘It seems rather remarkable that an assemblage of such linear and planar elements becomes transformed into tangible space, which flows around the surfaces...thin flat surfaces seem to have this power of creating empty volumes around them.’ Other key group exhibitions included This is Tomorrow at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1956 while his first major one man show was held at the ICA in July 1964.

Ernest was known for his precise meticulous work. Symmetry and asymmetry were key elements of his reliefs. He applied mathematics and geometry to constructions but kept the underlying theories simple, as did Pasmore and Hill. John Ernest’s work is held in many public collections including the Kazimir Gallery, Chicago; Tate, London and the Arts Council of Great Britain.