Rendell Wells
Rendell Wells (1911–1981) was a Glasgow-born artist, illustrator and teacher who became part of Edinburgh’s artistic and literary world during the mid-20th century. Settling in Edinburgh in the 1930s, Wells exhibited with the progressive New Era Group and moved in circles that included artist William Gear and poet and writer Sydney Goodsir Smith, with whom he also collaborated.
His career was unusually varied. During the war years he taught art to servicemen, while his wider practice encompassed painting, drawing, illustration and design. His work for Sydney Goodsir Smith included the striking frontispiece and cover design for Omens (1955) and illustrations for later publications.
Wells’s paintings range from observational and figurative work to increasingly bold abstraction. His later compositions are particularly distinctive: fractured planes of colour, heavy black lines and complex interlocking forms that can have an almost stained-glass quality.
Much of Wells’s work remained outside the mainstream art market, and the collection now being exhibited by Viki Knott Gallery offers an unusual opportunity to reconsider an artist whose life connected several fascinating strands of post-war Scottish cultural life.
