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13

Homage to Naum Gabo 1948
Oil on canvas
Signed, dated, numbered 73 / 2 & inscribed verso
16 x 20 ins 40.5 x 51 cms

Exhibited: Penwith Society, St Ives, 1973
Plymouth City Art Gallery, Mackenzie, Mitchell, Wells 1975, no 44
Tate St. Ives Retrospective,1998, no. 25

The title Homage to Naum Gaboappears to be Wells’ later addition to this work which is listed as Painting 1948 (Gaboid)on the artist’s card index system. Following Gabo’s departure from St. Ives to travel to America in November 1946, Wells and Lanyon, the two artists owing the most to his instruction and advice, formed a close friendship, working through and discussing ideas together. Throughout the late 1940s Wells continued to make and exhibit three-dimensional constructions whilst his painted work developed a more plastic sculptural quality. This composition is one of Wells’ most ambitious creations, combining a sense of lateral motion and recessional depth for the fractured form that also alludes to the material quality of Perspex, with radiating lines inscribed into the surface. The use of the dense green as a textured background may refer back to Gabo’s first paintings made in St. Ives, which used similar tones, but it also helps place the object against an organic, natural environment as if we are glimpsing some elemental force within the landscape.



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