Child's View - Bilbao Fine Arts Museum

Buy image

Child's View

Davies, John

Cheshire, United Kingdom, 19/06/1946

Polyester resin and paint

217 x 139.5 x 133.5 cm

1997-2001

Late 20th century-early 21th century

09/262

Acquired in 2009

As for Child's View, it belongs to a series of heads, recurrent in the artist's output, going from life-size to minute pieces or cyclopean heads, as this one, which measures in height over two meters. A child's view, referred to by Davies in the title of the work, offers a new dimension to the viewer's perspective; then, the eye is guided by the signs on the surface of the work, evoking marks of an archaeological quartering. The hieratic frontality of the figure is enlivened solely by the naïf colouring of the eyes and the mouth on the whiteness of the rough surface that makes it look like a plaster cast, suggesting the illusory and luminous trace of a monumental sculpture of Greek or Etruscan echoes.

Davies attended Hull and Manchester Colleges of Art during the 1960s. He then moved to London where he enrolled at the Slade School of Fine Art. In 1972 he held his first oneman show at London's Whitechapel Art Gallery, to great acclaim. At once representational and realist, Davies' contemporary classicism updates the historical reconsideration of an art that focuses on the solemn and enigmatic presence of man. [Marta García Maruri]

Selected bibliography

  • John Davies : esculturas y dibujos desde 1968 = Sculptures and drawings since 1968 [Cat. exp.]. Valencia ; Bilbao, IVAM Institut Valencià d'Art Modern ; Fundación Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2004. p. 217.
  • Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao : guía. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2011. pp. 204-205, n° cat. 146b.
  • Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa : gida. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2012. p. 204-205, n° cat. 146b.
  • Musée des Beaux Arts de Bilbao : guide. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2014. pp. 204-205.
  • Bilbao Fine Arts Museum : guide. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2014. pp. 204-205.