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Albums containing "construct" |
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Items containing "construct" |
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From Album: Tilson Joe ARCA RA
KEYWORDS: Available
JOE TILSON ARCA RA
b.1928
1234567890 Obelisk 1963
Oil on wooden construction
40 1/2 x 8 x 3 ins 103 x 20.5 x 7.25 cms
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| Exhibited: |
Marlborough Gallery, London, 1964
Waddington Galleries, London, 1992 |
| Literature: |
Arturo Quintavalle, Tilson,
Pre-art, Milan, 1977, p.202
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Matching descriptions:
JOE TILSON ARCA RA
b.1928
1234567890 Obelisk 1963
Oil on wooden construction
40 1/2 x 8 x 3 ins 103 x 20.5 x 7.25 cms
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| Exhibited: |
Marlborough Gallery, London, 1964
Waddington Galleries, London, 1992 |
| Literature: |
Arturo Quintavalle, Tilson,
Pre-art, Milan, 1977, p.202
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From Album: Wells John
Matching descriptions:
3. Collage 1941
Pencil, watercolour & paper collage on card
Signed, studio stamped & dated verso
121/2 x 151/2 ins 31.5 x 39 cms
Wells visited Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth at Carbis Bay
near St Ives in the spring of 1940 where he was introduced to Naum
Gabo. He was deeply impressed by Gabo’s constructivist ideas and
immediately fashioned a three dimensional response that Gabo
later described to Nicholson as ‘the perfect first effort in spatial
construction’. The present example is an important example of
Wells exploring tension and balance in space through the use of a
series of collaged geometric shapes interconnected within a linear
structure and with the central area of radiating lines.
The coloured concentric circles in each shape were created
with a small brass turntable, a device used by Wells’ father to make
microscope slides, and feature in Wells’ sole surviving relief
construction of the period in the Tate collection.
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From Album: Wells John
Matching descriptions:
4. Boat c.1942
Gouache & collage on paper
mounted on board
73/4 x 117/8 ins 19.5 x 30 cms
Wells visited Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth at Carbis Bay
near St Ives in the spring of 1940 where he was introduced to Naum
Gabo. He was deeply impressed by Gabo’s constructivist ideas and
immediately fashioned a three dimensional response that Gabo
later described to Nicholson as ‘the perfect first effort in spatial
construction’. The present example is an important example of
Wells exploring tension and balance in space through the use of a
series of collaged geometric shapes interconnected within a linear
structure and with the central area of radiating lines.
The coloured concentric circles in each shape were created
with a small brass turntable, a device used by Wells’ father to make
microscope slides, and feature in Wells’ sole surviving relief
construction of the period in the Tate collection.
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From Album: Wells John
Matching descriptions:
6. Untitled c.1944
Gouache & pencil on paper
7 1/8 x 9 1/2 ins 18 x 24 cms
During his visits to Carbis Bay Wells used to undertake long coastal
walks with Naum Gabo, during which Gabo collected pebbles or
bones and talked of their affinity with the constructive process.
Gabo’s sojourn in Cornwall appears to have confirmed a new
tendency to allow these natural sources into his work, perhaps
brought on by the state of the war and the means to which science
was being put in it. Wells responded to this romantically inspired
modernism through his own interest in natural phenomena and by
developing his own formal vocabulary to include a triangular ellipse
or pebble form. By presenting multiple aspects of a similar form
within the same picture and by drawing interior radiating lines to
define space, these works reference the contemporary crystal
drawings of Barbara Hepworth, an example of which Wells owned.
The use of areas of strong primary colour to indicate an interior
space in Variationsalso recalls the jewel like intensity of colour
used by Hepworth in her S culpture with Colour Deep Blue & Red,
1940 in the Tate collection.
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From Album: Wells John
KEYWORDS: Available
Three Circles in Squares 1967
Oil on wood construction
Signed, dated, numbered 67/ 2 & inscribed verso
32 x 26 ins 82 x 66.5 cms
Exhibited: Penwith Gallery, St Ives, 1967
Edinburgh Festival, 1967
Sheviock Gallery, 1970
Penwith Society, 1970
Matching descriptions:
32
Three Circles in Squares 1967
Oil on wood construction
Signed, dated, numbered 67/ 2 & inscribed verso
32 x 26 ins 82 x 66.5 cms
Exhibited:
Penwith Gallery, St Ives, 1967
Edinburgh Festival, 1967
Sheviock Gallery, 1970
Penwith Society, 1970
By 1967 Wells had arrived at a position of the utmost simplicity of
forms and means of expression, reducing the image to a few
repeated shapes and combined colours. In this work, a rare relief,
the proportion of the circles to the squares remains consistent but
each is treated in a different colour to create an undefined and
ambiguous spatial sense. The interior of the middle sized square is
painted with a pure cobalt blue whilst the larger square is applied
with a mixture of cobalt blue and white. Following its extended
exhibition history, Wells repainted a number of sections in 1972.
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From Album: Wells John
Matching descriptions:
36
Painting 1976
Oil & pencil on board
Numbered 87/ 10, studio stamped & dated verso
12 x 16 ins 30.5 x 40.5 cms
The last painting in the exhibition illustrates Wells’ increasing
awareness of the development and consistency of his career.
Many of the forms used in this work, from the crescent shape in
the upper left, to the small drawn circle above it, refer back to his
war time constructivist works, whilst the coloured square within a
square to the lower right is drawn from more recently produced
work. All of this geometric visual language is combined with the
central, heavily textured area. This may be an earlier painting
reworked by the artist, a practice that dominated his late work
from the 1980s.
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From Album: Archive
KEYWORDS:
Sold
MARLOW MOSS
1890 - 1958
Blue, Red, Black & White 3 1953
Oil on canvas
Signed & dated lower right, signed on frame
40 x 31 1/2 ins 101.5 x 80 cms
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| Exhibited: |
Seuphor, Netherlands, 1958, no.3
Nijhoff, Netherlands, 1962, no.29
Gemeentemuseum Arnhem, Netherlands, 1994
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| Literature: |
Florette Dijkstra, Marlow Moss constructivist & the Reconstruction
Project, Patten Press, Cornwall, 1995, no.S47, illus.
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Matching descriptions:
MARLOW MOSS
1890 - 1958
Blue, Red, Black & White 3 1953
Oil on canvas
Signed & dated lower right, signed on frame
40 x 31 1/2 ins 101.5 x 80 cms
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| Exhibited: |
Seuphor, Netherlands, 1958, no.3
Nijhoff, Netherlands, 1962, no.29
Gemeentemuseum Arnhem, Netherlands, 1994
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| Literature: |
Florette Dijkstra, Marlow Moss constructivist & the Reconstruction Project, Patten Press, Cornwall, 1995, no.S47, illus.
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From Album: Hitchens, Ivon 1893-1979
Foliage by Water no 3
KEYWORDS: Available
Foliage by Water no 3 1962 Signed lower right signed dated & inscribed on stretcher label Oil on canvas 17 1/2 x 58 1/4 in : 44 x 148 cm
Exhibited Tate Gallery Retrospective 1963 no 152
This painting and six others of the same subject were shown together at the
Tate retrospective of Hitchens’ work in 1963. They hung in the last room and
one wonders how many visitors, having already seen one hundred and fifty exhibits, will have had the patience and stamina to compare and contrast
these latest masterworks. Yet here was a rare opportunity to study Hitchens’ method, appreciate his aims, and marvel at his inventiveness.
Of the entire series of twelve paintings no 3 is the most daringly economical. The two competing focuses of interest are the sweeping arc on the left and the partially obscured blue diamond on the right. But even as one contemplates these simple geometries, the flat screens of colour, superimposed on one another, create space and recession: the arc becomes a tree-bordered
shoreline; in the background rises the barrier of a forest plantation; and above are the pale blue, thinly clouded skies of spring. A smaller arc, over the blue diamond, echoes the larger and sets up a rhythm. By such seemingly simple gestures Hitchens recreates his experience of a particular landscape while at the same time constructing an independently satisfying pattern on the canvas. Holding the two in equilibrium is Hitchens’ magical secret and the secret of
the painting’s perennial freshness and mystery.
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From Album: Hitchens, Ivon 1893-1979
Boat and Foliage
KEYWORDS: sold
Boat and Foliage in Five Chords no 3 1970 Signed & dated lower left signed dated & inscribed on stretcher label Oil on canvas 24 x 64 in : 61 x 163 cm
The challenge Hitchens set himself in this series was to reconcile the vertical eye-movement which he ‘orchestrated’ in five colour ‘chords’, with the more sweeping horizontal ‘rhythms’. When talking about his work, he was apt to use such musical analogies, which is natural if one wishes, as he did, to emphasize the abstract, constructive aspects of a painting, rather than the representational. In the first version the five vertical chords divide the painting into strongly contrasting sections of colour-shapes. This third version is much looser, with vertical and horizontal movement in perfect counterpoint, as intended.
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From Album: Wells, John
Matching descriptions:
34
Three Discs & Circle 1967
Oil & pencil on board
Signed, dated & numbered 67/ 7 & inscribed verso
14 x 18 ins 35.5 x 45.5 cms
Exhibited:
Penwith Society, 1967
Edinburgh Festival, 1968
This exquisite work represents the height of Wells’ paring down of
his visual vocabulary to the barest minimum. All extraneous colour
has been removed and we are left with the purest and most
complete of forms, devoid of visual distraction. Wells has created a
tantalising dynamic between the four circles, which plays with our
perceptions of real and imagined space, and as such can be seen as
the logical progression from his first initial spatial constructions,
created with the guidance of Nicholson and Gabo twenty five
years before.
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From Album: Wells, John
Matching descriptions:
5. Untitled c.1942
Pencil & gouache on paper
9 1/2 x 13 ins 23.5 x 33 cms
Wells found a receptive audience for his new abstract work with
the fighter pilots stationed on the Scilly Isles during the war, who
saw in the grace and poise of his work an analogy to their own
relationship to the land and sea whilst in flight. This encouraged
Wells to make explicit references to his immediate surroundings in
his work, comparing his heightened awareness of the fragile ring of
islands to the shapes that he placed together within his collages.
The frequent journeys made on his doctor’s rounds, from island to
island, brought about an intimacy with the sea and his boat so that
much of his subsequent imagery can be seen as referencing boat
and sail like forms. Wells introduced areas of flat constructive
colour into his work from early 1942 having acquired several tubes
of gouache the previous autumn.
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From Album: Wells, John
Matching descriptions:
7. Variations 1944
Pen, ink, pencil & tempera on board
Signed, numbered 73 / 3 & inscribed verso
7 x 10 ins 17.75 x 25.5 cms
Exhibited: Plymouth City Art Gallery, Mackenzie, Mitchell, Wells,1975, no. 40
Newlyn Orion Gallery, Penzance, 1975, no. 1
During his visits to Carbis Bay Wells used to undertake long coastal
walks with Naum Gabo, during which Gabo collected pebbles or
bones and talked of their affinity with the constructive process.
Gabo’s sojourn in Cornwall appears to have confirmed a new
tendency to allow these natural sources into his work, perhaps
brought on by the state of the war and the means to which science
was being put in it. Wells responded to this romantically inspired
modernism through his own interest in natural phenomena and by
developing his own formal vocabulary to include a triangular ellipse
or pebble form. By presenting multiple aspects of a similar form
within the same picture and by drawing interior radiating lines to
define space, these works reference the contemporary crystal
drawings of Barbara Hepworth, an example of which Wells owned.
The use of areas of strong primary colour to indicate an interior
space in Variationsalso recalls the jewel like intensity of colour
used by Hepworth in her S culpture with Colour Deep Blue & Red,
1940 in the Tate collection.
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From Album: Wells, John
Matching descriptions:
8. Painting 1945
Oil on board
Signed, dated, studio stamped & inscribed verso
13 3/4 x 6 ins 35 x 15.5 cms
Exhibited:Crypt Group, St. Ives, 1946, no. 51
Towards the end of the war and in the immediate period after
establishing a studio in Newlyn in 1945, Wells produced a number of
exquisite works in which he developed ideas and concepts that he
had experienced during the previous five years, on a larger, more
ambitious scale. This work is a classic example of this aspect of his
career, combining references to hull and rudder shapes with a
supremely graceful curve which pushes up through the space above
the horizon line, punctuating the background. The sense of balance
and implied movement across the picture makes this one of Wells’
strongest essays in pure constructivism.
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From Album: Wells, John
Matching descriptions:
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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From Album: Wells, John
Matching descriptions:
28
Composition Variation 1 1963
Oil on board
Signed, dated, numbered 67/ 12, studio stamped & inscribed verso
48 3/8 x 18 1/8 ins 123.5 x 46.5 cms
Exhibited: Waddington Galleries, London, 1964, no. 14
Following the commercial success of his more loosely handled landscape
evocations at the 1960 Waddington exhibition, Wells appears to have become
dissatisfied with the lack of structure and coherence in the larger work. He
wrote to Ben Nicholson in January 1961, ‘You may have heard I had a show at
Waddingtons in September last. It seems to have gone quite well. I wish I
could say the same of the work since then. I have produced virtually nothing
and feel as if I never will. I know a show is upsetting but three months is too
long – in fact pathological.’ He eventually turned to his love of geometry and
systems of proportion and musical structure as a means of support. The first
paintings produced in this new austere hard edge style date from later that
year. The present example is an essay in tonal and structural harmony and
recaptures some of the purity of his earliest constructivist work.
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From Album: Wells, John
Matching descriptions:
31
Blue with Red 1964-67
Oil on canvas laid on panel
Signed, dated, numbered 65/ 1 & inscribed verso
18 x 24 ins 46 x 61 cms
Exhibited:
Penwith Society, 1965
Signals Gallery, London, 1966
Edinburgh Festival, 1968
Penwith Society, 1972
Newlyn Orion Gallery, Penzance, 1975
This painting worked on over a three year period is a powerful
example of Wells’ continuing use of non-representational,
constructive colour. The combination of three different sized
and coloured squares painted on a plain background extends his
interest in the relative implied progression and recession of each
shape in relation to the other elements within the picture.
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From Album: Lanyon, Peter 1918-1964
Peter Lanyon
1918-1964
KEYWORDS: sold
Peter Lanyon 1918 - 1964
construction in Green 1947
Signed and dated lower right
Signed, dated and inscribed,verso
11 3/4 x 16 ins - 30 x 40 1/2 cm
Provenance:
Sheila Lanyon
Exhibited:
Crypt Group St. Ives, 1948, no. 47;
Lefevre Gallery, 1949, no. 44;
Arts Council of Great Britain, 1968, no. 13
Literature:
A. Causey, Peter Lanyon, Aidan Ellis, p. 44, no. 13, pl. 6;
A. Lanyon, Peter Lanyon, 1990, p. 80, illus
Matching descriptions:
construction in Green 1947
Signed and dated lower right
Signed, dated and inscribed,verso
11 3/4 x 16 ins - 30 x 40 1/2 cm
Provenance:
Sheila Lanyon
Exhibited:
Crypt Group St. Ives, 1948, no. 47;
Lefevre Gallery, 1949, no. 44;
Arts Council of Great Britain, 1968, no. 13
Literature:
A. Causey, Peter Lanyon, Aidan Ellis, p. 44, no. 13, pl. 6;
A. Lanyon, Peter Lanyon, 1990, p. 80, illus
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