Leo Davy (lots 91-98)

Introduction
There have been those who seem to have been artists, almost it appears from the day of their birth; such people are incapable of deviating from their natural and compulsive obsession in a world of their own, a world in which their lives are entirely consistent with their work and their being are one and the same thing. Leo Davy was one of these. (Sir Kyffin Williams, ‘Leo As I Knew Him’, in A Passion to Paint, Piano Nobile, exhib. cat., London, 2010, p. 6)

Born on Ilkley Moor, West Yorkshire, Davey was one of nine children. He refused to attend school with his siblings and instead was home schooled by his painter-art teacher father and musician mother. He became an accomplished artist and pianist early in his life and in his early teens Davy entered one of his drawings into a National Newspaper Art Competition; he won and at the age of 14 enrolled in the Kingston School of Art under Reginald Brill. Unable to be conscripted due to his inherited deafness, in 1942 he started at the Slade which had been evacuated to Oxford during the Blitz. One of only a few male students and with a keen interest in philosophy, Davy often sneaked into the university to attend lectures and made many friends among the philosophy students. Art was for him a philosophical enquiry. It was at the Slade that Davy met Kyffin Williams who had been invalided out of the army. Both men later became teachers and settled for a while in Highgate. But Davy left teaching to concentrate on his art.

Often described as an outsider or unconventional in his approach to life he communicated best through his work. His art was a very personal manifestation of himself - his maxim being ‘to paint as only I can paint.’ Determined not to make a living from his painting he worked as a toolmaker and tomato picker while living in an abandoned coastguard’s cottage in Lancing and later became an accomplished framer and gilder, firstly in London and then living on the North Cornwall coast with his wife Antonia. Davy spent most of his life surviving with very little money, moving from garret to garret in London - the archetypal bohemian artist. For the majority of his life he shied away from the art world and was hostile to showing his work. In fact, he rarely exhibited at all and sometimes turned down prospective purchasers for his deeply personal works. However, in 1950 Davy’s work was included in a summer show at Gimpel Fils alongside the pre-eminent artists of the day including William Gear, Victor Pasmore, Prunella Clough, Alan Davie and Patrick Heron. Having spent most of his life refusing to travel in his later life he did visit Paris twice with Antonia. He was mesmerised by the city. Davy died unexpectedly of a heart attack at his home in North Cornwall in 1987.


91
LEO DAVY (BRITISH 1924-1979)
EXHIBITION
signed with initials and dated 53 lower right
oil on board
25.5 x 61cm; 10 x 24in
(unframed)