Composition, Blue Centre

Gear served as curator to the Towner Art Gallery from 1958-64 and this painting is from the artist's period in Paris (1947-50), as evidenced from the French date inscribed on the reverse. The use of bold colours contained within irregular black lines is characteristic of this period when Gear was at the forefront of abstraction in Europe, creating angular almost dirty compositions that contributed significantly to Cobra's expressionist re-invention of modernism following the wholescale destruction of world war.