Frontispiece of the 1998 monograph which accompanied the same-named touring exhibition.

One of the most complex representatives of the visual arts in Wales is, without a doubt, Ivor/Ifor Davies - painter, art historian, linguist and activist. In all four spheres he has shown to possess an outstanding aptitude. He is one of the few Contemporary Welsh Artists to have established an international reputation, not only as a painter but also as a journalist and art critic.

In 1989 Max Rutherston introduced one of Ivor Davies' exhibitions in New Bond Street/London in these words: "A native of Wales, Ivor Davies has spent most of his working life teaching the History of Art and Cultural Studies at higher education level. He has also kept himself busy giving lectures in universities throughout the country, and writing articles and reviews for art journals, many on Russian avant-garde art. Last year (1988) he gave up teaching to concentrate on his painting, which he has always managed to keep up alongside his academic commitments. This will in fact be his nineteenth one-man exhibition since 1963, including a major one at Newport and Newtown in 1987 [50 by 2001]. When one meets this reflective and soft-spoken Welshman, it is hard to imagine him at the centre of the International Destruction in Art Symposium, held in London in 1966. It is harder still when one looks at the current tranquil work, where, even in the figure composition, there is no hint of sound or movement".

A decade later, in 1998, Jan Morris wrote on the occasion of Davies' exhibition 'Legends from the White Book' at Wolseley Fine Art in Notting Hill London: "Ivor Davies ... has been powerfully influenced by surrealism all his life. He relishes the eerie wonder of the abruptly frozen scene, which is so much a part of the Mabinogion. And it is often as queerly arresting in the old Welsh stories as it is in a painting by Chirico, standing just as ambiguously in the half-light between symbolism and liberated fancy. Davies explicitly links his art to that of the Mabinogion story-teller. He is a profoundly patriotic artist, without displaying any of those insular prejudices: to narrow the limit's of one's vision & sympathy to the frontiers of a single country, or to the emotions of one people's history, is surely self-mutilation."

Davies himself says about his work: "Works of art are embodiments of an idea, which often represents a community of feelings held by all in common. They are the embodiment of applied philosophy in a way. Without realising it an artist depends on where he thinks he belongs in spirit or place. From one end of the spectrum painterly art, formalism, metaphysical still-life, the suggestion of narrative, Celtic subjects and the Mabinogion range gradually to social issues and political struggle at the other."

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The Painter

The Art Historian

The Activist

Bookreview

Early Work:
The 50s | The 60s | The 70s

Artist's Statement: 'I was fanatically interested in art in school. In my teens I had mined yellow ochre and this light Indian red to make dense, gravely paint. But the association of the natural pigment with time & place in my works is more recent. Discontinuously I have painted Welsh mythology, history and social issues since school days. Much of my work is about the memory of this ancestral culture, the fusion of ancient history and legend with modern issues of unwritten history and activists who have become modern legends'.

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