British

Biography
Born in 1930, Gillian Ayres is a British Abstract painter. She initially studied at Camberwell School of Art, London from 1946-50 and exhibited at the first Young Contemporaries exhibition.

Ayres was one of the first British painters to be influenced by American Abstract Expressionism. Her colour field painting, where the whole depiction is made up of expanses of colour in which contrasts and tone are undefined and the focus of attention is not drawn to one specific area of the canvas, was clearly inspired by Jackson Pollock and others artists of the same period such as Mark Rothko.

From 1951 to 1959 she worked part-time at the AIA Gallery, sharing the job with painter Henry Mundy, whom she subsequently married, and where she met artists such as Roger Hilton. Ayres, still influenced by American Abstract Expressionist, began to use the technique of colour staining in the 1960s, where diluted paint is applied to an unprimed canvas to create a unity of surfaces. Also in this period some of her work made use of Pollock’s drip techniques. Also in the 1960 Ayres took part in the Situation exhibition at the RBA galleries, through which she gained a following and became more prominent. In 1963 she was awarded the Japan International Art Promotion Association’s Award at the Tokyo Biennale.

She has shown regularly since 1965 at the Kasmin / Knoedler Gallery, and at the RA and took up a number of teaching posts during the 60s and 70s, firstly at Bath Academy of Art, Corsham from 1959-66 and then at St Martin’s from 1966-78, where she was appointed Senior Lecturer in 1976. In 1966 she took part in the exhibition, ‘Aspects of New British Art’ which toured New Zealand and Australia. It was during the 70s that her work became more painterly, introducing floral motifs for example.

Later she taught as Winchester School of Art as Head of Painting, between 1978 and 1981, before finally abandoning all teaching posts in order to move to Wales and devote all her time to painting. In 1975 she received an Arts Council Bursary and in 1979 a Purchase Award from the Arts Council. A retrospective of her work was held at the Serpentine Gallery, London in 1983. Ayres was awarded an OBE in 1986 and was elected Royal Academician in 1991 (ARA 1982).

Gillian Ayres lives and works in Cornwall and London.


Literature
Introduction to catalogue, Tim Hilton, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, 1981
‘Gillian Ayres’, Matthew Collings, Flash Art, Nos 94-5, January - February 1980