Alan Davie

Sacrifice

1956

© Estate of Alan Davie

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Not on display

Artist: Alan Davie 1920–2014
Medium: Oil paint on board
Dimensions: Support: 2337 × 3200 mm
frame: 2445 × 3211 × 38 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Purchased 1964
Reference: T00633

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By the mid-1950s recognisable symbols were appearing alongside the chance marks in Davie’s paintings. As in this painting, they did not convey specific meanings. Instead Davie considered them to be ‘primordial symbols which have many and varying meanings at different times but unknown to mankind’.

Although the central passage of this painting suggests disembowelled entrails, Davie maintains that the title was applied retrospectively. He equated sacrifice with ‘something cruel, noble, frightful, transcendent: a link between life and death, personal and universal’.

Gallery label, September 2004

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