British
Painter of abstracts in oils, watercolours and gouache. Born in Fife, Scotland, from 1936-7 he studied art at Edinburgh Eniversity with Gillies, Maxwell and McTaggart. He won a travelling scholarship to Paris and worked at the Academie Colarossi under Leger. Between 1937 and 1938 he travelled to Italy, Greece and the Balkans and during war service he exhibited abroad. Between 1947 and 1950 he lived in Paris and then served in England, visiting America in 1957 and 1959. In Paris he worked with the COBRA Group, exhibiting with them in Copenhagen and Amsterdam. Not only was he associated with the School of Paris but he was also aware of the developments in American art, meeting Milton Rosnick, Marcarelli and Rothko in Paris and in 1949 exhibiting with Jackson Pollock. From 1948 he exhibited with Gimpel Fils Gallery, London, and his work has appeared nationally and internationally, including the Venice Bienniale, 1954. Between 1954 and 1985 a number of retrospective exhibitions were held. A member of the London Group in 1953, between 1958 and 1964 he was Curator of the Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne, and from 1964 to 1974 Head of Fine Art, Birmingham Polytechnic. In 1951 he was awarded a Festival of Britain Purchase Prize and in 1975 the Lorne Fellowship. He was elected RA in 1995. In his early Cubist-abstract paintings a dark armature supported coloured areas often with a figurative reference. his work progressively became freer, exploring the contrast between dark support, light and colour, the armature fragmenting and becoming balanced by the optical pattern of light. A natural colourist, Gear described his works as, 'statements of kinship with the natural world'.

LIT:
Exhibition catalogue, Gimpel Fils, 1961