online exhibition
A selection of screenprints by Alan Davie which can be found in permanent collections of Modern Galleries in England and Scotland
Each print £1,000+VAT (unframed)
In the 1960s Alan Davie took to printmaking. Stanley Jones, who had been charges with setting up a new printmaking studio, Curwen, met Davie in Cornwall in the late 1950s and invited him to make some prints. At first Davie hesitated believing it would be impossible to make a print in the same spontaneous manner he employed in his paintings, but in 1961 he agreed, making the first of a series of works for Curwen. He adopted the practice of serial creation which he had used in his drawings, quickly making marks and drawings on a series of lithographic plates, and getting the printers to print them on different presses, change the colours, print them upside-down and layer the imagery.
Jones recalls: He had the idea of using workshops with all the printers at his beck and call. That is a change in the way artists worked and it occurred in the 1960s. Davie had an important influence on the other printers of the period. He freed up the approach to graphic work generally. He was like a breath of fresh air for printmaking, very open-minded about creative accidents as they happened. He was fascinated by accident and incorporated it into the work.
Davie also made a number of prints in Zurich for the London-based firm Editions Alecto, notably the landmark Zurich Improvisations, 1965, where once more, the emphasis was on improvisation and on testing the possibilities to their full.
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