Modern British Art, Contemporary British Art at Jonathan Clark Fine Art
 
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6. Untitled c.1944
Gouache & pencil on paper
7 1/8 x 9 1/2 ins 18 x 24 cms

During his visits to Carbis Bay Wells used to undertake long coastal walks with Naum Gabo, during which Gabo collected pebbles or bones and talked of their affinity with the constructive process. Gabo’s sojourn in Cornwall appears to have confirmed a new tendency to allow these natural sources into his work, perhaps brought on by the state of the war and the means to which science was being put in it. Wells responded to this romantically inspired modernism through his own interest in natural phenomena and by developing his own formal vocabulary to include a triangular ellipse or pebble form. By presenting multiple aspects of a similar form within the same picture and by drawing interior radiating lines to define space, these works reference the contemporary crystal drawings of Barbara Hepworth, an example of which Wells owned. The use of areas of strong primary colour to indicate an interior space in Variationsalso recalls the jewel like intensity of colour used by Hepworth in her S culpture with Colour Deep Blue & Red, 1940 in the Tate collection.




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