John Wells (British, 1907-2000) Relief on a Seventh Module (Homage to Ben and Gorin) oil on carved wood in a perspex box frame 61.2 x 122.2 cm. (24 1/8 x 48 1/8 in.) Please note that this work bears signature and number 'John Wells/4.7bb' (on a Wills Lane Gallery label verso) Conceived in 1970 Fußnoten Provenance With Wills Lane Gallery, St. Ives, where acquired by the present owner Private Collection, U.K. The present work is from two editions of 7 with 3 artist's proofs. It was constructed by Graham Potter in collaboration with John Wells and Henry Gilbert, Wills Lane Gallery, St. Ives and is three times the size of the original. As the title suggests, this carved wood relief by John Wells pays respect to both the artists Ben Nicholson (1894-1982) and Jean Gorin (1899-1981). Nicholson famously altered the visual language of modern British art in 1934 with his first painted, pure white, carved reliefs, which in themselves were a development of his coloured reliefs begun the year before. Nicholson wrote to his wife, Winifred, following a visit to see her in Paris during 1933 that his aeroplane journey home had a profound effect on him. He referenced the white clouds more than once, and Jeremy Lewison comments: 'The ability to pass from one level to another with abruptness and precision, bypassing intermediate planes, is a quality found in Nicholson's reliefs and was paralleled in his description of the flight. The purity of the white cloud, moreover, may have had some bearing on his next major advance, the making of white reliefs.' (Jeremy Lewison, Ben Nicholson Phaidon Press, London, p.16) John Wells was acquainted with Ben Nicholson from a young age, having met both him and Christopher Wood in St Ives in 1928 as a student at the age of twenty-one. He became familiar with his work, although Wells's own ambition to become an artist was initially delayed for financial reasons and he became a doctor, working from the Scilly Isles until after the war. Where Relief on a Seventh Module (Homage to Ben and Gorin) deviates from Ben Nicholson's white reliefs is in its introduction of the projecting shelf and upright form it supports. Here, Wells is showing his admiration for the French neoplastic painter and sculptor, Jean Gorin a disciple of Piet Mondrian who developed his idiosyncratic wall reliefs in the late 1920s; although these were polychrome, unlike the purity of Nicholson's work and the present lot.
John Wells (British, 1907-2000) Relief on a Seventh Module (Homage to Ben and Gorin) oil on carved wood in a perspex box frame 61.2 x 122.2 cm. (24 1/8 x 48 1/8 in.) Please note that this work bears signature and number 'John Wells/4.7bb' (on a Wills Lane Gallery label verso) Conceived in 1970 Fußnoten Provenance With Wills Lane Gallery, St. Ives, where acquired by the present owner Private Collection, U.K. The present work is from two editions of 7 with 3 artist's proofs. It was constructed by Graham Potter in collaboration with John Wells and Henry Gilbert, Wills Lane Gallery, St. Ives and is three times the size of the original. As the title suggests, this carved wood relief by John Wells pays respect to both the artists Ben Nicholson (1894-1982) and Jean Gorin (1899-1981). Nicholson famously altered the visual language of modern British art in 1934 with his first painted, pure white, carved reliefs, which in themselves were a development of his coloured reliefs begun the year before. Nicholson wrote to his wife, Winifred, following a visit to see her in Paris during 1933 that his aeroplane journey home had a profound effect on him. He referenced the white clouds more than once, and Jeremy Lewison comments: 'The ability to pass from one level to another with abruptness and precision, bypassing intermediate planes, is a quality found in Nicholson's reliefs and was paralleled in his description of the flight. The purity of the white cloud, moreover, may have had some bearing on his next major advance, the making of white reliefs.' (Jeremy Lewison, Ben Nicholson Phaidon Press, London, p.16) John Wells was acquainted with Ben Nicholson from a young age, having met both him and Christopher Wood in St Ives in 1928 as a student at the age of twenty-one. He became familiar with his work, although Wells's own ambition to become an artist was initially delayed for financial reasons and he became a doctor, working from the Scilly Isles until after the war. Where Relief on a Seventh Module (Homage to Ben and Gorin) deviates from Ben Nicholson's white reliefs is in its introduction of the projecting shelf and upright form it supports. Here, Wells is showing his admiration for the French neoplastic painter and sculptor, Jean Gorin a disciple of Piet Mondrian who developed his idiosyncratic wall reliefs in the late 1920s; although these were polychrome, unlike the purity of Nicholson's work and the present lot.
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.jpg "Source: Christie's")
.jpg "Source: Christie's")
