JOHN WELLS (BRITISH 1907-2000) §
WINDOW, 1948
£18,750
The Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Collection
Auction: 28 October 2021 at 18:00 BST
Description
signed, titled and dated (to reverse), oil and pencil on board
Dimensions
29.5cm x 35cm (11.6in x 13.75in)
Provenance
Provenance:
In Barns-Graham's notes about her collection she notes she purchased two oils by John Wells.
Footnote
Exhibited:
1949: Paris, Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, 1949.
2020: Bristol, Royal West of England Academy, St Ives: Movements in Art and Life, 14 March to 19 September 2020.
John Wells and Wilhelmina Barns-Graham shared a particular friendship. Both had benefited from the mentorship of Ben Nicholson who, of the many artists that gathered in St Ives, seemed to have had a particular interest in Barns-Graham’s work. She and Wells had also been significantly influenced by the work of Naum Gabo, a leading figure in Russian Constructivism who, as an emigrant during the War, followed his friends Nicholson and Hepworth to St Ives, playing a key role in the modernist developments that took place.
This impact was seen in the pair's artistic practices which shared an affinity with an analytical, at times scientific approach to abstraction. As a result there is often something more linear and hard-edged to their output than some of their more expressionistic peers: a theory of the landscape and its forms as much as a representation of it.