Alan Davie
Although Davie's work is generally grouped with that of his
contemporaries, such as Scott, Lanyon and Heron, in discussions of
abstraction in British art in the 1950s, there is a fundamental
difference in his work. Whilst many of the leading figures of British
painting in the post-1945 period based their work in the abstraction
of reality, for Davie his painting was much more akin to the
surrealism of artists in the European tradition such as Klee, his
first-hand exposure coming by chance in 1946. In 1948 he took up a
travelling scholarship deferred due to his war service, and with his
wife Bili hitch-hiked across Europe, first to Paris, where they met up
with the CoBrA painter and fellow Scot, William Gear, and then on
towards Italy. Arriving in Venice for the first post-war Biennale, not
only was Davie able to see a major retrospective of Braque and a fine
exhibition of Klee, the Greek Pavilion, which would otherwise have
been empty, was given over to Peggy Guggenheim's collection of
Surrealist and Contemporary American art. Thus Davie was probably the
first British artist of his generation to experience at first hand
works by the painters of the New York School, such as Rothko, Pollock
and Gorky, then largely unknown outside the United States. The scale
of the works, their bold handling and ritualistic imagery made a deep
impression on Davie, and in the later part of the year he held
exhibitions in Florence and Venice. The Venetian exhibition, at
Galleria Sandri, saw a work purchased by Peggy Guggenheim, Music of
the Autumn Landscape. The oft-repeated anecdote that she had assumed
the artist to be American perhaps demonstrates how far Davie's
painting practice had been liberated from that of his fellows back in
Britain. Having struck up a friendship with Guggenheim, he was thus
afforded further opportunities to study her collection. An interest in
the spontaneous and chance elements of making monotypes was clearly
reflected in his painting, and in 1950 he held his first one-man
exhibition at Gimpel Fils.
In the mid 1950s he started to become interested in both Zen Buddhism
and Jungian psychology and found the emphasis on releasing the
subconscious from the strictures of the everyday very appealing.
During the decade, Davie was teaching, first at the Central School of
Art and from 1956-59 as Gregory Fellow at Leeds University and in his
classes he encouraged his students to allow their art to grow in an
unforced and relaxed way that released the creative process. In the
paintings of the period we are thus faced with what can at first seem
to be a bewildering variety of imagery and physical mark-making. The
paint is brushed, scraped, splashed and dragged across the canvas to
create works which seem to suggest so much yet leave the viewer with a
sense that further discoveries are still to be made.
Copyright Sotheby's
Please follow the link for a full CV, http://www.gimpelfils.com/
Shown by
Gimpel Fils, London
contemporaries, such as Scott, Lanyon and Heron, in discussions of
abstraction in British art in the 1950s, there is a fundamental
difference in his work. Whilst many of the leading figures of British
painting in the post-1945 period based their work in the abstraction
of reality, for Davie his painting was much more akin to the
surrealism of artists in the European tradition such as Klee, his
first-hand exposure coming by chance in 1946. In 1948 he took up a
travelling scholarship deferred due to his war service, and with his
wife Bili hitch-hiked across Europe, first to Paris, where they met up
with the CoBrA painter and fellow Scot, William Gear, and then on
towards Italy. Arriving in Venice for the first post-war Biennale, not
only was Davie able to see a major retrospective of Braque and a fine
exhibition of Klee, the Greek Pavilion, which would otherwise have
been empty, was given over to Peggy Guggenheim's collection of
Surrealist and Contemporary American art. Thus Davie was probably the
first British artist of his generation to experience at first hand
works by the painters of the New York School, such as Rothko, Pollock
and Gorky, then largely unknown outside the United States. The scale
of the works, their bold handling and ritualistic imagery made a deep
impression on Davie, and in the later part of the year he held
exhibitions in Florence and Venice. The Venetian exhibition, at
Galleria Sandri, saw a work purchased by Peggy Guggenheim, Music of
the Autumn Landscape. The oft-repeated anecdote that she had assumed
the artist to be American perhaps demonstrates how far Davie's
painting practice had been liberated from that of his fellows back in
Britain. Having struck up a friendship with Guggenheim, he was thus
afforded further opportunities to study her collection. An interest in
the spontaneous and chance elements of making monotypes was clearly
reflected in his painting, and in 1950 he held his first one-man
exhibition at Gimpel Fils.
In the mid 1950s he started to become interested in both Zen Buddhism
and Jungian psychology and found the emphasis on releasing the
subconscious from the strictures of the everyday very appealing.
During the decade, Davie was teaching, first at the Central School of
Art and from 1956-59 as Gregory Fellow at Leeds University and in his
classes he encouraged his students to allow their art to grow in an
unforced and relaxed way that released the creative process. In the
paintings of the period we are thus faced with what can at first seem
to be a bewildering variety of imagery and physical mark-making. The
paint is brushed, scraped, splashed and dragged across the canvas to
create works which seem to suggest so much yet leave the viewer with a
sense that further discoveries are still to be made.
Copyright Sotheby's
Please follow the link for a full CV, http://www.gimpelfils.com/
Shown by
Gimpel Fils, London
