SP 4796
ALAN DAVIE
b. 1920 Grangemouth, Scotland
How high: Opus 0.338
Signed, dated Nov 1960 and inscribed with the title on the reverse
Board: 48 x 60 in / 121.9 x 152.4 cm
Framed size: 51 x 63 in / 129.5 x 160 cm
In its original frame
Provenance:
Martha Jackson Gallery, New York, no. 6412
Alan Davie’s international reputation grew throughout the 1950s and in 1956 he had his first one-man show at the Catherine Viviano Gallery, prompting him to visit New York for the first time. While there, the critic Dore Ashton organized two parties so that Davie could meet contemporary artists such as Motherwell, Pollock, Kline, de Kooning and Rothko. During the course of the show the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Albright Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo both bought works. Two years later, a major retrospective took place in the UK, held at four venues including the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London.
In the 1960s Davie was at the peak of his powers and in a position to enjoy his success. He gave up teaching, bought a house in Cornwall and pursued exhilarating activities such as gliding, sailing, diving and music, the joy of which he was able to incorporate into his work. The titles ascribed to paintings made during this period (which Davie usually invented once the work was completed) reflect the lighter tone and high spirits of the artist at the time.
The ecstatic enthusiasm and spontaneity of Davie’s intuitive approach is delightfully embodied in How high: Opus 0.338, it’s dramatic explosion of vibrant colour and rapid brushwork creating a riotous image. The numbered opus sub-title, usually ascribed to a musical composition, demonstrates the clear correlation between Davie’s art and work as a jazz musician, as he explained during an interview in 1992: ‘It’s never the case in my work of having an idea first and then putting it on paper. The idea comes out of working. I do a whole series of drawings on an idea which has presented itself. I might do about twenty variations using that idea and developing it. It is very much like improvising on a piano – sitting down and playing, an idea will appear out of putting one note against another, which leads to other notes and, before you know where you are, a melodic line has appeared, and a harmonic structure presents itself’ (cited in P. Elliot, Alan Davie: Work in the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, exhibition catalogue, Edinburgh, 2000, p. 14)
ALAN DAVIE
b. 1920 Grangemouth, Scotland
Although chronologically Davie tends to be grouped with his contemporary abstract artists such as Scott, Lanyon and Heron, there is a fundamental difference in their work. Whilst many of the leading figures of British painting in the post-war period based their work in the abstraction of reality, Davie’s painting was much more akin to the surrealism of artists in the European tradition, such as Klee.
Born on the 28th September 1920, James Alan Davie at Grangemouth, Scotland, Davie entered Edinburgh College of Art in 1937. He was awarded the Andrew Grant Scholarship in 1938 and 1941. From 1941-46 Davie carried out his military service with the Royal Artillery. In 1947 he married Janet (Bili) Gaul, an artist/potter, and became a full-time jazz musician for a while, playing tenor saxophone with Tommy Sampson’s Orchestra. He also began making and selling silver jewellery. Davie traveled extensively throughout Europe in the late 1940s. In 1950 had his first solo show at Gimpel Fils, London and held one there every two years after that. His first American show was held at the Catherine Viviano Gallery, New York in 1956.
In the mid 1950’s Davie 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. At the time, 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. Davie’s painting as a result exhibits a multitudinous 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.
Davie was awarded a CBE 1972. He lives and works in Hertfordshire and Cornwall.