Gillian Ayres (1930–2018)

Biography

Gillian Ayres was one of the most significant abstract painters of her generation. She is known for her enveloping, vibrant, joyously colourful paintings and prints. Her work was always ambitious and large in scale; she made her mark in 1960 as one of the artists included in the ‘Situation’ exhibition organised by the Arts Council. The exhibition highlighted the younger artists stepping away from the St Ives Group and instead looking toward a more international, large-scale abstraction. Ayres’s work engaged with contemporary developments in American Abstract Expressionism and European Lyrical Abstraction. From pouring paint onto canvas on the floor of her studio to climbing up ladders to apply oil paints to the canvas with her hands, her engagement with painting was always active and physically demanding.

Ayres held many teaching posts, including St Martin’s School of Art and Winchester School of Art. She taught at the Bath Academy of Art at Corsham Court from 1959 to 1966. Among her colleagues were many key British contemporary artists, including Terry Frost, Adrian Heath, Peter Lanyon, William Scott, and Howard Hodgkin. In 1981, Ayres left teaching to dedicate herself to painting full-time, relocating first to Wales and later, in 1987, to the border of North Devon and Cornwall.

Ayres started to receive more sustained public attention at this time, beginning with an Arts Council exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery in 1983. Other key exhibitions took place in the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff (2017); Jerwood Gallery, Hastings (2010); Southampton City Art Gallery (2005); Royal Academy of Arts, London (1997); Manchester City Art Gallery (1993); Serpentine Gallery, London (1983); Museum of Modern Art Oxford (1981); Kettle's Yard, Cambridge (1978) and Arnolfini, Bristol (1964).

Her paintings and prints are held by major museums and galleries around the world including Tate, London; British Museum, London; Arts Council, London; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool; Ulster Museum, Belfast; National Museum of Wales, Cardiff; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Fine Art, Boston; Yale Center for British Art, New Haven; Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Museum of Modern Art, Brasilia.

Related artists

John Hoyland / Richard Smith / Peter Jackson / Adrian Heath / Prunella Clough

Available works

Please see below the selection of available original artworks by Gillian Ayres.