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Alan Davie

Title

Painting, July

Date1955

MediumOil and mixed media on board

Dimensions

153 x 122 cm

Signedon verso: Alan Davie July 55

Credit LinePurchased, 2017

Object numberNGI.2017.48

DescriptionAlan Davie was a painter, printmaker, poet, and musician. He was one of the first British artists to engage with Abstract Expressionism after the Second World War. In the 1950s Davie developed a distinct form of expression. He worked at speed, placing canvases on the floor so that he could drip and run layers of paint across their surfaces, turning them as he went. Underpinning Davie’s abstraction was a deep interest in myths and symbols. He believed that artist-made marks were not random but that they held a much deeper cultural significance.

Executed in 1955, 'Painting, July', is one of Davie’s early and most immediate works. Its surface - stippled, splashed, dripped, painted in rough impasto - reveals the innovative experimental techniques that the artist was exploring at this time. It’s scale and the energy with which it has been executed epitomises the visceral vitality of post-war abstraction.
ProvenanceGimpel Fils, London; Beniamino Levi, Milan; Private Collection, UK; Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert, LondonExhibition HistoryVitalitá nell'Arte, Palazzo Grassi, Venice, Italy, August - October 1959; Recklinghausen, Kunsthalle, October - December 1959

Amsterdam and Louisiana, Denmark, November 1959 - March 1960