John Wells 1907-2000

Never a fast worker, the deadline imposed on Wells by his 1960 Waddington Galleries exhibition meant that his work for this show has a spontaneity of handling that in later paintings was often eliminated as they were reworked over a long period, sometimes for years. In Landscape Elements, the combination of landscape forms and colours within a rhythmical geometrical framework and an unusually textural surface work together to create an image of great simplicity and poetry.

Of a larger scale than many of Wells’ works, this freedom of handling may have a link to his visit to Paris in 1959 with Patrick Heron where they had visited Pierre Soulages and Wells seems to have been impressed by Soulages’ ability to combine a tight and compact compostion with a broad and expressive handling of the paint.