Cady Wells

Cady Wells (November 15, 1904 – November 5, 1954) was a painter and patron of the arts who fixed in New Mexico the 1930s. He has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, during his excitement and posthumously.

Henry Cady Wells was born in 1904 in Southbridge, Massachusetts, the son of Channing McGregory Wells, President of the American Optical Company and founder of Old Sturbridge Village. As a teen man, he had years of classical training in music, literature and the arts. At first his interests led him to laboratory analysis music, training to become a concert pianist. Then he shifted to stage design, studying like Joseph Urban, and Norman Bel Geddes. He was afforded everything the cultural and instructor advantages that a child of a rich first generation New England Family could receive. Wells, who was homosexual, was the intimates rebel. He dropped out of five boarding schools and refused to fit into the plans of his conservative family. He discovered the Southwest afterward his dad sent him to Evans Ranch School in Arizona in 1922. Wells fell in love with the desert and mountain landscapes and began painting them.

In 1932, Wells qualified that his capability lay in the area of painting, which would become his career. He in style an invitation from performer E Boyd and her husband Eugene Van Cleave to take over Santa Fe, New Mexico. There he began portraying the southwest landscapes in watercolors. He soon became a gigantic painter, working next to Andrew Dasburg. He college the landforms by walking and studying the mountains, mesas, and driftwood, and collecting river rocks.

Wells was intensely influenced by Japanese and Chinese philosophies and aesthetics though he was in Japan (1935).

His exhibitions were sometimes to the side of the ham it up of enlarged known artists such as Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, Adolph Gottlieb, and Jackson Pollock. In supplement to Dasburg, he was influenced by Raymond Jonson, and Georgia O'Keeffe.

His art career was interrupted bearing in mind he entered into the United States Army in 1941, where he worked with topographic maps. He did not paint over until he returned to New Mexico in 1945.

While vibrant in Taos, Wells restored an old Spanish home at Jacona, some twenty miles north of Santa Fe, and there gained a reputation as a magnificent host. He was clever, witty, affectionate, and generous; he anonymously aided numerous individuals during the post-depression and lawsuit years. Many in the community sought him out as a guest and a friend. He made many friends, and soon became one of the social figures of Taos and Santa Fe.

Wells was known for his love and contributions to Santa Fe. He served on the board of directors of Santa Fe's School for Advanced Research and helped found the Jonson Gallery in Albuquerque. He gave his deposit of some 200 santos to the Museum of New Mexico in 1951, with the condition that a cut off department be time-honored for Spanish colonial art. He recommended his buddy E Boyd for the job of curator.

Wells died of a heart offensive in Santa Fe in 1954, a few days shy of his fiftieth birthday.[citation needed]

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