Graham Bell (artist)

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Graham Bell (November 21, 1910 Transvaal, – August 9, 1943), was an artist and journalist.

Painter of portraits, landscapes and still life. Bell first worked in a bank and on a farm before turning to art. He studied at the Durban Art School and held first one-man exhibition at the City Hall in Durban in 1931. Came to England 1931. At first inspired by the work of Duncan Grant; then met William Coldstream and, under the influence of Geoffrey Tibble, showed non-representational works at the exhibition of Objective Abstractions at the Zwemmer Gallery in 1934.

Between 1934 and 1937, Bell abandoned painting and took up journalism. He contributed to the New Statesman and went on to become the arts editor of that publication. He took up painting again but continued with his writings and in 1939 he published The Artist and His Public. Bell also wrote the Plan for Artists along with Kenneth Clark which put forward the idea that modern artists should receive patronage to encourage them. This scheme saw a number of his contemporaries being enabled to become artists, when financial necessity would otherwise have ended their careers.

In 1937, along with William Coldstream, Lawrence Gowing, Rodrigo Moynihan, Victor Pasmore and Claude Rogers, Bell was one of the founders of the Euston Road School. This modern British realist group of painters all either taught or studied at the school of painting and drawing which they set up at 316 Euston Road in London. They were consciously reacting against avant-garde styles and asserting the importance of painting traditional subjects in a realist manner. This attitude was largely based on a political agenda to create a widely understandable and socially relevant art. Most were socialists and some of them were members of the Communist Party. Many also were recording with the idea of recording their times for posterity as part of the Mass Observation movement; however their work was not propagandist in the manner of Socialist Realism. The School was affiliated to the Artists’ International Association, helping artists fleeing from Nazi Germany to resettle and find work.

When war broke out Bell enlisted with the RAF. He was killed on a training flight in England on August 9, 1943 ending at the age of 32 what was widely foreseen as becoming one of the most sensitive and conscientious artistic careers.