Alan Davie

Screenprints

Alan Davie, arguably Scotland's greatest living painter, has at 81 just mastered a new medium.

This exhibition featured 32 screenprints - effectively his entire screen print out put - the great majority of which are being shown for the first time. This show reveals a formidable artist at his peak.

At 81 years of age anyone could be forgiven for taking time out, slowing down, enjoying some of the benefits of a lifetime of dazzling, innovative work. But not Davie. Already proficient in lithography and etching, he was asked in 1999 to contribute a screenprint for a portfolio commissioned by Kings College, Cambridge.

Work in the new medium brought Davie into contact with master printer Kip Gresham. The ensuing collaboration has produced some 32 editions, all of which will be on view at the exhibition Alan Davie: Prints from Gresham Studios at Broadbent, London.

Alan Davie rose to prominence following his shows in the 1950s and his work is now represented in the world's major museums and collections. A friend of Jackson Pollock, Willem De Kooning and Mark Rothko, Davie is a true polymath - a poet with a penchant for flying, swimming and fast cars, a designer of jewellery and textiles and a mean jazz saxophonist who played with Ronnie Scott and has several albums to his name. The mutual trust and interdependence required from jazz musicians is echoed in the collaboration that is needed to create a good screenprint, and in the hands of Davie and Gresham, a series of truly great screenprints.

View a selection of screenprints from this exhibition

Alan Davie Home Page

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