David Tremlett belongs to the generation of British artists such as Richard Long, Gilbert & George and Hamish Fulton, who in the 1960s and 1970s developed a practice that was the conscious antithesis of the dominant modernist sculpture. A graduate of the Royal College of Arts in London, he broke free from the confines of the studio to create works in the open air. David Tremlett's art has become an art of the encounter, of his encounter with a place. From the late 1970s onwards, his in situ Wall Drawings became, along with his works on paper, the core of his practice.

Since the 1980s, Tremlett has mainly used pastels, which he applies directly to the wall or paper by hand. The powdery material preserves the trace of this action, which animates the surface of the support. Its rich pigment content adds depth of tone, while its texture gives it a silky, vibrant appearance. 

In his compositions, ‘the geometric figures very rarely appear pure, the artist preferring to give them, through slight distortions, a kind of lived experience that removes them from the strict register of classical geometry. (...) This sensitive, living geometry is in no way systematic. It is conducive to the emergence of new forms in which the unexpected mingles with the surprising and, without departing from its rules, gives David Tremlett's works a kind of natural distinction that endows them with a unique, indefinable poetry that is certainly rich in all his past experiences’. (Guy Tosatto)