ALVA. (Solomon Siegfried Allweiss) (1901–1973). Two small paintings of abstract figures, on card, sent to Sir Herbert Read as New Year cards in the early 1960's. Read had written the introduction to the book of Alva’s recent paintings and drawings, in 1951. Provenance: acquired c20 years ago from a small collection of material by descent from the Read family. 184mm x 130mm & 182mm x 135mm. c1962-1963. ~ Painter and graphic artist Alva (né Siegfried Solomon Alweiss) was born into an observant Jewish family to traditional Galician parents in Berlin, Germany in 1901; he lived in Galicia until the age of ten. After leaving school, he began a career in commerce, then studied music at Stern's Konservatorium, Berlin (1919–1925), before turning to art, legally adopting the shortened form of his name, 'Alva', in 1925, studying painting in Paris in 1928 and exhibiting at the Salon d'Automne. In 1934 he travelled in Palestine, Syria, and Greece, and held his first solo exhibition in Tel Aviv the same year. Following Hitler’s accession to the German Chancellorship in 1933, Alva became ‘stateless’ after his passport was cancelled since neither of his parents was German. He returned to France and from there fled to London in 1938. In 1940, following the introduction of internment for so-called ‘enemy aliens’, Alva was briefly interned on the Isle of Man, where he produced a number of internment drawings. After his release a monograph by Maurice Collis 'Alva, paintings & drawings' was published in 1942; a second title by Collis, of recent paintings and drawings, published in 1951 had a foreword by the British art historian Herbert Read. In 1944 Alva was included in the opening exhibition at the Ben Uri Gallery’s new Portman Street premises, and this initiated his relationship with the gallery which included a lecture in November 1948 on 'The Purpose of Painting', in which he claimed inspiration from Rembrandt and Daumier among others; he also participated within group shows at the gallery on numerous occasions including in 1949, 1950 and 1956. He held solo exhibitions at the Waddington Galleries, London in 1958 and the Leger Galleries, as well as elsewhere in continental Europe, Israel, the USA, and South Africa.