Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/1469255
In 1928, during a brief break from his training to become a Doctor, John Wells studied painting in Newlyn with Stanhope Forbes. He met Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth and Naum Gabo, and while working as a doctor in the Scilly Isles, during the 1930s, maintained his friendship through visits to St Ives. By the end of the war he had saved sufficient money to abandon his career as a doctor and to buy a studio once used by Forbes in Newlyn. The landscape of Cornwall would form a lasting influence on his work. In the paintings and constructions Wells made from the early 1940s onwards, Patrick Heron detected a sympathy with Gabo, Hepworth, Arp, Nicholson, Klee and Miró. Yet he also identified a 'sheer taste so exquisite and so personal as to obliterate any suggestion of undue derivativeness'. 1 Wells' work might allude to the curved forms of boats, to birds or to the horizon, but these references were rendered in terms of geometry – as ellipses, squares and triangles upon textured grounds. A first solo exhibition at the Waddington Galleries in 1960 proved an unqualified success, selling every work on display. From a second exhibition in 1964, in which Constructed Relief (1963) was included, the only work sold was Painting (1962): a vertical grid-based composition purchased by the Tate. It was an experience that paralysed him, as he wrote soon afterwards to Nicholson, leaving him with 'permanent depression.' 2 James Burr's review of the Waddington exhibition stressed the works' refinement to such an extent as to imply criticism. (Cont.) 95