An Abstract painter who earned his following as a member of the St. Ives group of artists in the early 1950s. Ben Nicholson became a friend and mentor for Bell, providing sound advice and encouragement. Bell eventually became a modern postwar artist whose work often challenges conventional ideas about painting. After graduating in 1952 from the College of Art in Leeds, Yorkshire, the artist moved to Cornwall, where he was inspired to turn his industrial landscape paintings into Abstract pictures.