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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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