Francis Davison (1919 – 1984)

Biography: Francis Davison was adopted and brought up in the south of France. Though he read English at Cambridge University and intended to become a poet, in 1946 he was invited to go to St. Ives by his former school friend the artist Patrick Heron. There he met Margaret Mellis and they settled in Suffolk in 1950.
By 1952 Davison had begun to work in collage, and would do so for 30 years. Davison claimed that he was the only true collagist, relying entirely on found papers, more often torn than cut.