Sculptor and letter-cutter, born in Reading, Berkshire, who produced figurative, semi-abstract and abstract works in a wide range of materials. Powell studied with Harold Youngman at Hornsey School of Art in the late 1930s. Instead of teaching, he became “a sculptor-craftsman, doing any commissioned work I would get in a conventional style. Working for architects and private clients, I produced carved lettering, architectural decorations, fireplaces, church figures, portraits – anything requiring a sculptor’s skills that came my way.” During that period, he developed an individual style which was “basically incompatible with much I was then making.” Many and various influences led to that direction change, notably Paul Klee’s Pedagogic Notebooks, “an approach to three-dimensions that was rigorous, analytical and, at the same time, genuinely liberating and poetic.