One of the greatest of all outsider artists: Alfred Wallis at Kettle’s Yard reviewed

Martin Gayford | The Spectator | 31st October 2020

Wallis was oblivious to any modest artistic reputation he had. He painted just for companionship, using a limited palette – “shiny blacks, fierce greys, strange whites” and paying little regard to perspective. Two London artists discovered him by chance. Dissatisfied by art’s “decadence”, they saw in Wallis not an eccentric but an authentic modernist. What is it that gives his paintings their directness and subtlety? “More was going on in his mind than we’ll ever know.”