Gillian Ayres

Gillian Ayres was a prominent figure among abstract painters of her time. Alongside her vibrant, intricately crafted canvases that define her legacy, she also devoted herself to printmaking.

Biography of Gillian Ayres

Gillian Ayres was born in 1930 in London, UK. She studied at St Paul's Girls' School in London and taught art to children in areas of London damaged by bombs.

Ayres subsequently chose to pursue art education. In 1946, she sought admission to the Slade School of Fine Art and was accepted, but being sixteen years old, she was deemed too young to enroll. She was advised to apply to the Camberwell School of Art, where she studied from 1946 to 1950.

She showcased her works with the Young Contemporaries in 1949 and later exhibited with the London Group in 1951. Her first solo exhibition took place at Gallery One in London in 1956. The subsequent year, she received a commission to create a large-scale mural for South Hampstead High School for Girls.

In 1963, her paintings were prominently featured in the pioneering exhibition "British Painting in the 60s" at the Whitechapel Art Gallery.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, she held various teaching positions and formed friendships with painters like Howard Hodgkin, Robyn Denny, and Roger Hilton. From 1965 to 1978, she served as a senior lecturer at Saint Martin's School of Art in London, and in 1978, she made history as the first female teacher in the UK to lead the painting department at Winchester School of Art. In 1981, she transitioned from teaching to focus exclusively on her career as a painter.

In 1987, she moved to the North Devon-Cornwall border, where she lived for the remainder of her life. She was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1989 and elected as a Royal Academician in 1991. Gillian Ayres was awarded a CBE in 2011.

The artist died in 2018. 

Gillian Ayres' Art Style

Ayres' early works often feature thin vinyl paint in a restrained palette and simple compositions. In contrast, her later oil paintings are characterized by vibrant colors and rich impasto textures. She typically titled her paintings after completing them, choosing titles that evoke the overall atmosphere rather than directly describing the content.

She was committed to printmaking throughout her career, collaborating with Jack Shirreff and later with Peter Kosowicz. In 1998, she produced her initial print series—a set of three etchings—in partnership with the Alan Cristea Gallery (now Cristea Roberts Gallery).

Ayres continued to push the boundaries of printmaking, exploring various techniques such as etching, woodcut, and monoprint. She innovated by introducing carborundum and hand-painting into her printing process. In the late 2000s, Ayres embraced woodblock printing, skillfully layering inked woodblocks on textured Japanese paper. Her dedication to creating original prints grew unabated over the years, resulting in a substantial body of graphic work in her later years that rivaled the scale and vibrancy of her abstract paintings.