Ivor Davies MBE is a Welsh-speaking, Welsh artist born in Treharris, in November 1935. He currently lives and works in Penarth. As a boy Davies went to Penarth County School. He studied at Cardiff College of Art and Swansea College of Art between 1952 and 1957, and then from 1959 to 1961 studied at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. He then began teaching at the University of Wales before moving on to the University of Edinburgh, where he also completed a PhD on the Russian avant-garde. Davies finally retired from teaching at the Gwent College of Higher Education in 1988.