Gimpel Fils gallery has announced that the artist Alan Davie died peacefully at his home on 5 April. His death was announced on the eve of a new exhibition, Spotlight: Alan Davie, at Tate Britain. He was 93. Davie was best known for creating works that, whilst inspired by Abstract Expressionism, drew heavily on myth and ‘magic symbolism’.
Davie was born in Grangemouth and graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in the late 1930s where, alongside painting, he had developed an interest in poetry and jazz music. Following national service in the Royal Artillery during World War II, he played saxophone in a touring jazz troupe and in addition wrote poetry, made pots, designed textiles and worked as a jeweller.
In the late 1940s, Davie travelled to Europe with his wife Janet, eventually arriving in Venice during the first post-war Biennale. There he saw the works of Pollock, Rothko and de Kooning for the first time and was inspired to take up painting again. Having sold two paintings to US dealer Peggy Guggenheim, he had his first solo exhibition at Gimpels Fils, London, in 1950.
At this time, his work received little critical attention in the UK. In 1956, however, he visited New York where his show at the Catherine Viviano Gallery was a sell-out, with paintings being bought by major institutions such as MoMA. He also met the Abstract Expressionist contemporaries who had inspired his work, including Jackson Pollock. Davie later said: “They were very enthusiastic about my work, which was very strange to me, having come from London where my work was considered rubbish by the critics… Jackson Pollock was very excited about my work.”
In 1958, Davie took up a fellowship at Leeds University which led to a retrospective at Wakefield Art Gallery. The showed moved to the Whitechapel Gallery, London, where he received critical acclaim for the first time in the UK. His work continued to attract attention throughout the 60s with major exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam and as part of the Bienal di Sao Paulo, Brazil in 1962, and solo exhibitions throughout Europe. His work also featured in Antonioni’s 1966 film Blow-Up.
In 1972 he was awarded a CBE, but as he turned increasingly to mysticism and symbolism in his work, he enjoyed less public recognition and became something of an outsider. Alongside painting, he continued his interest in jazz, setting up the Alan Davie Music Workshop at a house he had bought in St Lucia in the Caribbean, and producing regular concerts and recordings of spontaneous music.
In the 90s, major retrospectives at McLellan Galleries, Glasgow (1992), Barbican Gallery, London (1993) and Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh (2000) and a retrospective of his drawings at University of Brighton and Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (1997) meant his work was seen for the first time by a younger generation of artists. Davie was elected a Senior Royal Academician in 2012. His works are held in public collections around the world including Tate Gallery, National Galleries of Scotland and MoMA, New York.
Alan Davie, 28 September 1920 – 5 April 2014.
