Trevor Bell

Overcast

1961

Not on display

Artist: Trevor Bell 1930–2017
Medium: Oil paint on canvas
Dimensions: Support: 610 x 610 mm
frame: 652 x 652 x 58 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Purchased 1962
Reference: T00479

Catalogue entry

T00479 OVERCAST 1961

Inscr. ‘Bell 61’ b.r.
Canvas, 24×24 (61×61).
Purchased from the Waddington Galleries (Knapping Fund) 1962.
Exh: Waddington Galleries, February 1962 (24).

The artist wrote (20 April 1962): ‘“Overcast” was the key painting for the period of work culminating in the last exhibition at Waddington's. As always I was concerned with making the painting a self-sufficient entity, not describing or necessarily alluding to anything else, but with it, as with many of the works of that period, I wanted to re-create a strangeness and power of imagery I find in the North. This was coupled with a need to make the work more positive, so that each piece of the painting was harmonically related to the whole - each form would be equally important - no longer a centre, or major forms supported, but a sort of presence or environment, completely inter-related but demanding decisions from the viewer as the point of departure.’

Published in:
Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, I