 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
11
Structure in Oval 1947
Oil on canvas
Signed, dated, numbered 86/ 7 & inscribed verso
18 x 14 ins 46 x 35.5 cms
Exhibited:
Waddington Galleries, London, 1960, no. 37
Tate St. Ives, Retrospective,1998, no. 21 illus.
Wells first employed the three sided shape that he referred to as
his ‘pebble form’ during his war years on the Isles of Scilly; and in
this important painting he presents it floating at the centre of the
composition against an undefined background. Through his
association with Gabo and Hepworth, who both explored the
interior of their sculptures as much as the exterior, and his own
questioning scientific mind, Wells presents ‘the pebble’ as semitransparent,
revealing it’s internal structure and the forces that
define and maintain its contour. This is one of a series of paintings
produced at this time exploring the interior space of organic oval
forms, suggestive of a search for the regenerative forces of nature
found within seeds that paralleled Peter Lanyon’s Generation Series.
|
|
|
|
|
|
