ALAN DAVIE (1920-2014)

‘He seems to me to be among the major figures in the art of our time. He represents a particular artistic position, very relevant to the contemporary situation – a readiness to go back to beginnings, to think again about the meaning and the purpose of art at a time when most painting is unthinking in the sense of the word. His point of view commands respect, and it is expressed essentially through the paintings. These have come to show an overriding concern with the symbolic image, chosen by intuition, and meaningful at many levels, not least as objects in the pictorial space with an independent life of their own’ (A. Bowness (ed.), Alan Davie, London, 1967, p. 169).

In 1941, Davie was awarded the Andrew Grant Travelling Scholarship while studying at Edinburgh College of Art. This was postponed due to military service and it was not until 1948 that he took the scholarship and embarked on a 'Grand Tour' of Europe. He visited his fellow Scot, William Gear, in Paris, where he admired the work of Bruegal and Bosch, hitched to Switzerland and saw the work of Arp and Ernst in Zurich and most significantly arrived in Venice for the first Biennale after the War. It was here that he experienced a synthesis of Romanesque architecture and early Christian mosaics with the work of Rothko, Pollock and Motherwell.

In December 1948, Davie exhibited at the Galleria Sandri in Venice. Peggy Guggenheim bought Music of the Autumn Landscape from this exhibition and an ensuing friendship allowed him access to her extensive Surrealist collection, including Miró and Klee, as well as the New York School artists. Davie was in fact to find success in New York before he was really accepted in London. In 1956 he held a one-man show at the Catherine Viviano Gallery in New York which sold out to great critical acclaim. Paintings were purchased by the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo.