Trevor Bell found significant success very early in his career. By the time he was 30 he had already held two sell out exhibitions at the Waddington Gallery (one of the most progressive in Britain at the time) and two more were to follow. His constant evolution and desire to push the boundaries of painting saw him fall out with the directors of Waddington’s who were alarmed when he began experimenting with shaped canvases. At this time, few if any other artists were working in such a way in Britain, but his later 1960s work bears close comparison to the work of Ellsworth Kelly and Kenneth Noland in America. In fact, Trevor found the lure of a more open and enquiring cultural landscape in America too hard to resist and he accepted a position as Professor of Graduate Painting at Florida State University in 1973. He returned to the UK briefly only to open a major survey of his work at the Whitechapel Gallery in London.

He continued to exhibit and travel widely while based in Florida. He had major commercial gallery shows in Chicago and New York and throughout Florida. He was taken on by Richard Demarco in the UK. Demarco’s gallery in Edinburgh was the UK home of Joseph Beuys and Marina Abramovic at the time. Demarco considered Bell’s solo exhibition in his gallery the best by any painter in Scotland during the 1970s. Bell held many exhibitions in public galleries in Florida during the 1980s and 1990s and his reputation continued to grow. It took some time for Bell’s achievements to be recognised again in the UK, yet recognition did occur in the shape of a major exhibition of his work at the Tate St Ives in 2004.

In 2009 a major monograph was published on the artist with a critical appreciation of the artist written by Chris Stephens, Senior Curator of British Art at the Tate Gallery. The Tate Gallery recently acquired around a dozen works by Trevor to supplement those pieces already in their collection. Trevor’s paintings can also be found in the Arts Council (UK), V&A Museum, British Museum, British Council, Government Art Collection (all London) and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. Corporate collections that house his work include American Express, Coca-Cola, Deutsch Morgan Grenfell, Florida First Bank (who commission a 120 foot canvas), Miami Airport, Royal Bank of Scotland and the UK law firm Slaughter & May who have a substantial holding of recent work.