Wells was a printmaker and painter associated with the Harlem Renaissance. Alain Locke, the key critic and theorist of African American art and literature during the 1920s, was one of Wells’s biggest supporters. Wells’s images were often used to illustrate articles and covers for local magazines, from the left-wing monthly New Masses to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s The Crisis and the National Urban League’s Opportunity.
Gallery label from 2020