Trevor Bell British, 1930-2017
Still, 1998
Mixed media on canvas
78 x 57 in
198 x 145 cm
198 x 145 cm
Trevor Bell was born in Leeds in 1930 and attended the local college of art. In his twenties, working in West Cornwall, he made his reputation as a leading member...
Trevor Bell was born in Leeds in 1930 and attended the local college of art. In his twenties, working in West Cornwall, he made his reputation as a leading member of the younger generation of St. Ives artists who established British art on the world stage. Following his enormously successful first one-man exhibition at the Waddington Galleries in London in 1958, Trevor Bell was awarded the Paris Biennale International Painting Prize and an Italian Government Scholarship.
In 1960 Trevor Bell was offered the Gregory Fellowship in Painting at the University of Leeds and so moved back to his hometown. It was during this time that Bell first developed his shaped canvases, which set his work apart from other abstract artists of his generation. By the second half of the decade, Bell’s vision for the shaped canvases had become monumental and one could argue that the artist was pushing the boundaries far more than any of his St. Ives peers. His work of this period redefined the painting as an object in its own right as opposed to merely a window onto the world.
After a larger travelling retrospective in Scotland, Ireland and England in 1970 and a major one-man show at the Whitechapel Gallery in London in 1973, Trevor was invited to become Professor for Master (Graduate) Painting at the Florida State University in Tallahassee. It was in Florida that Bell developed the intensely coloured paintings for which he is best known, pushing expansive canvases to new extremes of form, and in the process developing his unique contemporary idiom of which Blue Radial is a prime example. Important exhibitions were held at the Corcoran Gallery and the Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., the Metropolitan Museum in Miami, the Cummer Gallery in Jacksonville and the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
In 1985 Bell was included in St Ives 1939-64, a seminal exhibition at the Tate Gallery in London, and in 1993 he was part of the inaugural show of the Tate St Ives. He has been a regular exhibitor in private galleries in Miami, Atlanta and Chicago, and has had works purchased and commissioned by numerous international museum, public and private collections. He has lived and worked in England, France, Italy and Canada, returning to live in Cornwall in 1996. In 1998 he was honoured with an Emeritus Professorship by Florida State University. More recently, Bell had a major solo exhibition at the Tate St.Ives in 2004 and, in 2011, a further 14 works were obtained by the Tate Gallery for their permanent collection.
In 1960 Trevor Bell was offered the Gregory Fellowship in Painting at the University of Leeds and so moved back to his hometown. It was during this time that Bell first developed his shaped canvases, which set his work apart from other abstract artists of his generation. By the second half of the decade, Bell’s vision for the shaped canvases had become monumental and one could argue that the artist was pushing the boundaries far more than any of his St. Ives peers. His work of this period redefined the painting as an object in its own right as opposed to merely a window onto the world.
After a larger travelling retrospective in Scotland, Ireland and England in 1970 and a major one-man show at the Whitechapel Gallery in London in 1973, Trevor was invited to become Professor for Master (Graduate) Painting at the Florida State University in Tallahassee. It was in Florida that Bell developed the intensely coloured paintings for which he is best known, pushing expansive canvases to new extremes of form, and in the process developing his unique contemporary idiom of which Blue Radial is a prime example. Important exhibitions were held at the Corcoran Gallery and the Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., the Metropolitan Museum in Miami, the Cummer Gallery in Jacksonville and the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
In 1985 Bell was included in St Ives 1939-64, a seminal exhibition at the Tate Gallery in London, and in 1993 he was part of the inaugural show of the Tate St Ives. He has been a regular exhibitor in private galleries in Miami, Atlanta and Chicago, and has had works purchased and commissioned by numerous international museum, public and private collections. He has lived and worked in England, France, Italy and Canada, returning to live in Cornwall in 1996. In 1998 he was honoured with an Emeritus Professorship by Florida State University. More recently, Bell had a major solo exhibition at the Tate St.Ives in 2004 and, in 2011, a further 14 works were obtained by the Tate Gallery for their permanent collection.
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