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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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