A Hug from the Art World in Chelsea is presenting a long-term exhibition of Scottish Abstract Expressionist Alan Davie (1920–2014), focusing on his work from 1959 to 1971. Gallery founder Adam Cohen, who discovered a Davie painting in his father Frank Cohen's collection, curated the show to highlight what he considers Davie's most influential period, when his style evolved into a psychedelic, complex visual language amid the rise of Pop Art and Minimalism.
This exhibition matters because it reexamines an underappreciated figure in post-war British abstraction who was celebrated by the New York School and collected by Peggy Guggenheim, yet remains relatively obscure. By concentrating on Davie's pivotal 1960s output, the show challenges dominant art-historical narratives and invites fresh consideration of an artist whose eclectic influences—from Celtic art to jazz and Jungian psychology—produced a singular, defiantly unfashionable body of work.