Alan Davie

Alan Davie CBE (1920–2014) was one of the most original figures in post-war British art. Painter, printmaker, musician and poet, he developed an intensely personal visual language that drew upon mythology, music, calligraphy and non-Western cultures. Following travels through Europe in the late 1940s, including a formative encounter with Peggy Guggenheim’s collection in Venice, Davie became one of the earliest British artists to embrace the expressive freedom associated with Abstract Expressionism while maintaining a distinctive artistic identity of his own.

Alan Davie, Grand Insignia, 2013 (£3950)

Within Sharpe Fine Art’s exhibition narrative, Moving to Modernism – Arriving at Abstraction, Davie demonstrates that abstraction could be intuitive as well as analytical. Where artists such as Nicholson sought structure through geometry and systems, Davie explored spontaneity, symbolism and gesture, allowing the act of painting itself to become an essential part of the finished work.