William Gear R.A. (1915-1997)

Catalogue Note

William Gear is one of the few British painters to have played a significant role in the modern abstract movement of post-war Europe. William Gear was the most passionate and committed exception.   Like the Scottish colourists he admired, such as Peploe and Fergusson, Gear lived and worked in Paris. In recent years, he has received the greatest acclaim in France, Germany and the Netherlands.

Gear was born in 1915 in Methil, Fife, into a mining family and studied art Edinburgh College of Art.  On a travelling scholarship in 1937, he chose to study with Fernand Leger, described by Gear as "a keystone for me, seldom

abstract, rather a degree of abstraction".  Initially Gear's abstract and intellectual approach courted controversy, notoriously, Gear was awarded one of the Festival of Britain Purchase Prizes for Autumn Landscape (1951), but despite the accolade the large oil on canvas was not well received by the general public and produced written questions and answers in the House of Commons and a tirade of abuse from the national press, not to mention a topic for debate on the radio programme Any Questions. It was an episode that made him a household name.

Quite early on Gear demonstrated a fondness for heavy black line, within which colour is sometimes locked. In the mid-1950's Gear experimented with simple geometrical abstracts, but as early as 1951-52 he produced a series of paintings which recall cubism or futurism in their juxtaposition of diagonals and patches of colour.

Gear was made a member of the London Group in 1952 and was awarded the title of Senior Royal Academician in 1995.