British
Born in Grangemouth, he attended Edinburgh College of Art 1937-40, making jewellery as well as painting. After Military Service 1940-6, he taught children, and for a period was a professional jazz musician. (He has since given concerts, recitals and has made a record). He travelled widely in Europe 1947-9.

In 1950 he had the first of many one-man shows at Gimpel Fils. From 1956 to 1959 he was Gregory Fellow at Leeds University. He has broadcast and lectured on his own work, and taught at the Central School 1959-60.

His brightly-coloured and richly patterned paintings are alive with sybols and signs, evoking primitive magic, religion and eroticism. He has work in many major museum collections world-wide, and won prizes at the VII Biennale in Sao Paolo in 1963, at Cracow in 1966 and else where.
Arguably, it is in writing about his own painting that he is at his most poetic. Although it is obvious that Davie has a deep understanding of the work of others, his work and personage stand quite alone. Alan Bowness wrote of him in the 1960s: "It makes little sense to write of Davie's work in relation to other artists, this painter has recognised his own singularity and jealously guarded it".

LIT:
Alan Dabie, Alan Bowness, 1967
Alan Davie, catalogue, city of Aberdeen Art Gallery, 1977
Alan Davie Douglas Hall and Michael Tucker, Lund Humphries, London.