Ivor Davies (born 1935), a recognised artistic and moral authority in post-war Welsh art, has touched upon a number of principles in his work that go a long way towards defining the art of the second half of the 20th century.
Yet the definitive quality of his work lies in his constant reflection upon the contested history of Wales. In the context of British art, Ivor Davies made a particular name for himself by association with the Destruction in Art Symposium (DIAS) held in London in 1966. For the British cultural scene, this was one of the events fundamental to coming to terms with what came to be known as the 'counter-culture'. Action elements and the power of destruction, transformed into an aesthetic and symbolic quality, also feature continuously in Davies' later art, in which he allows visitors to 'intervene' in his pictures, or cuts up objects sacred to Welsh households, such as the Bible and a gun, in order to manifest, in ritual fashion, the ambiguity of Welsh identity. Ivor Davies should be introduced into the Central European context because of the relationship between the variety and content of his work and post-war modern and neo-avant-garde art. Expressive and imaginative elements, as well as an affinity with surrealism and action art, activism, and an enchantment with the derivatives of neo-classicist figuration and Balthus (or De Chirico) seem to mirror the Czech aptitude for coping with the culture a part of which we feel to be, with all the adoption and grafting this requires, together with the ever-present specificity of our national historical and mental experience. In the case of Davies and his Welsh origins, allegory shines through a high degree of lyricism, without the artist having to resort to ironic gestures in order to bring home the credibility of his statement. For all their variety, however, these multiple means of expression do not result in a divergence. The artist notes that he is not interested in building up any immediately recognisable style or 'handwriting'. His pictures and works of art must be observed as individual entities, with experience transferred from the artist. A specific piece is an interplay of various concepts of reality, of political and cultural events, of the quality of the pigments and other materials used, as well as being a reflection of other past and present works of art. For that matter, Davies studied the history of art and has written a remarkable book on Soviet avant-garde art, L'Eta Delle Avanguardie / The Age of the Vanguards (Turin, 2002).
