William Gear RA RBSA (1915-1997)

William Gear was born in Fife in 1915. He studied at Edinburgh College of Art from 1932, expressed an early interest in Surrealism (which he soon abandoned) and had a brief brush with the Scottish Colourists when he was taught by S J Peploe. When he graduated, he won a travelling scholarship and went to Paris to study under Ferdinand Leger. Early works show his Surrealist leanings and were shown at his first exhibition in Scotland of Surrealist Art in 1939. He was called up in 1940 and travelled to the Middle East, continuing to paint with any spare vehicle paint he could find, staging solo exhibitions in Florence in 1944 and Hamburg in 1947. From 1945-1947 Gear travelled to Germany where he worked as a Monuments Man in Berlin. From 1947–1950 he settled in Paris, his circle of friends including Alan Davie, Hans Hartung and Pierre Soulages. His work became more abstract with a bold palette, rather like the Abstract Expressionism which was practised in America at this time. His friend Stephen Gilbert introduced him to CoBr.A which allowed him to exhibit in shows from Copenhagen to the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. In 1950 he moved to Buckinghamshire with his American wife and painted large canvases including “Autumn landscape” which was shown at the Festival of Britain in 1951. It won a prize, but due to its abstract nature and being reproduced upside down in the catalogue, caused major controversy but great PR for Gear as a result. It now hangs ... show more

William Gear was born in Fife in 1915. He studied at Edinburgh College of Art from 1932, expressed an early interest in Surrealism (which he soon abandoned) and had a brief brush with the Scottish Colourists when he was taught by S J Peploe. When he graduated, he won a travelling scholarship and went to Paris to study under Ferdinand Leger. Early works show his Surrealist leanings and were shown at his first exhibition in Scotland of Surrealist Art in 1939. He was called up in 1940 and travelled to the Middle East, continuing to paint with any spare vehicle paint he could find, staging solo exhibitions in Florence in 1944 and Hamburg in 1947. From 1945-1947 Gear travelled to Germany where he worked as a Monuments Man in Berlin. From 1947–1950 he settled in Paris, his circle of friends including Alan Davie, Hans Hartung and Pierre Soulages. His work became more abstract with a bold palette, rather like the Abstract Expressionism which was practised in America at this time. His friend Stephen Gilbert introduced him to CoBr.A which allowed him to exhibit in shows from Copenhagen to the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. In 1950 he moved to Buckinghamshire with his American wife and painted large canvases including “Autumn landscape” which was shown at the Festival of Britain in 1951. It won a prize, but due to its abstract nature and being reproduced upside down in the catalogue, caused major controversy but great PR for Gear as a result. It now hangs

in the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle. He pioneered the technique of silkscreen and exhibited some of the prints as artworks from 1953. He represented Britain at the 1952 Sao Paulo Biennale, had a joint exhibition with Ivon Hitchens in London in 1954 and with Sandra Blow in New York in 1957 as well as Jackson Pollock, in addition to touring shows with the British Council including “Seven British Artists” in 1959. In 1958, Gear was appointed Curator of Towner Art Gallery in Eastbourne which was a post surrounded with controversy from locals and councillors alike, due to his choice of acquisitions. A councillor commented “I think this sort of painting is decadent”. Gear mounted an exhibition in 1959 called English Contemporary Art which filled the local newspapers with derogatory complaints. By 1962 the Observer newspaper noted that Towner was the most go-ahead municipal gallery of its size in the country. The acquisitions included works by Sandra Blow, Edward Burra, Alan Davie, Patrick Heron, Roger Hilton, Peter Lanyon and Edward Wadsworth. Gear recognised the necessity for British galleries to modernise from the Victorian age. Lucky for Towner that he was unwavering in his path to achieve this but it required a stubbornness which Gear possessed to curate the collection. Gear was a controversial artist, reluctant to be a committee man. He was described as “one of our few real colourists, maker not of pattern but of light”. He was invited by a fellow student from Edinburgh, Wilhelmina Barns Graham, to St Ives, a great hub for artists. He was repulsed by what he saw as “provincialism”. “I was a Parisian now, it was pretty small beer to me”. In 1962 he offered two paintings to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, which were rejected. The sculptor F E McWilliam resigned in protest. His work during this period showed diagonal back armatures against vibrant colour, like light pulsing through foliage. From the 1970s onwards the armatures no longer symbolised tree trunks but jagged metal arms. The following years saw softer round edged shapes amongst the hard edges and in his twilight years Gear was making abstractions with ink and oil stuck on paper. Gear was made a Senior Royal Academician aged 80, some three decades after starting to exhibit there. He died on 27th February 1997 in Birmingham Public Collections include: City Museum & Art Gallery, Birmingham Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow Museum of Art, Ohio Museum of Art, Tel Aviv Museum of Modern Art, New York The Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto National Gallery of Canada, Ottowa Victoria & Albert Museum, London