YATES, HAROLD (1916-2001)

"Abstract Composition" (1941)
ink on paper
25 x 35cm
signed lower right
*private collection, Sydney
 
Yates is a forgotten English Modernist & Surrealist. He studied for 18 months at Portsmouth School of Art 1930-1931 after which he joined a commercial studio as a figure painter but became disillusioned with the disciplines and began to paint abstract works in his spare time. Harold exhibited with the Artists International Association and the London Gallery with his first solo show at Foyles Gallery in 1935. In 1939, a commercial artist, living at 73 Chapel Way, Banstead, Surrey with his parents Wilfred, now a commercial traveller in confectionary, and Elizabeth, incapacitated. His career was interrupted by service in the army during the Second World War when he did documentary work, which was purchased by the War Artists' Advisory Committee and is now in the Imperial War Museum, at the same time producing pictures with a personal symbolism. After the war he worked as a freelance commercial artist and was on the staff of a London advertising agency, while continuing to paint abstracts in his spare time. Yates had a solo show at the Belgrave Gallery in 1989, and a retrospective at Chappel Galleries in Essex in 1992.