Soloman Siegfried Allweis was born in Berlin to Jewish Austrian parents. He studied music and worked as a typographer. Since 1925 he signed his work ‘Alva’ and lived as a painter in Paris from 1928 until moving to London 1935/36 when he received British nationality. He had many one-man exhibitions of mainly abstract art in London, Europe, USA, and South Africa at galleries such as the Waddington, St. Georges, Leger, Meltzer and Adler galleries. There have been a number of books on his art with at least three published by the Bodley Head since 1951. Portfolios of original graphics have also been published in very limited editions.