Gillian Ayres facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Gillian Ayres
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Gillian Ayres, 1962
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| Born | 3 February 1930 Barnes, London, England
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| Died | 11 April 2018 (aged 88) North Devon, England
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| Education | St Paul's Girls' School |
| Alma mater | Camberwell School of Art |
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Notable work
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Antony and Cleopatra |
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Gillian Ayres CBE RA (born February 3, 1930 – died April 11, 2018) was an English painter. She was famous for her abstract paintings and prints. These artworks used very bright colors. She was even nominated for the Turner Prize, a major art award.
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Early Life and Education
Gillian Ayres was born in Barnes, London, on February 3, 1930. She was the youngest of three sisters. Her parents owned a factory that made hats. When she was six, she started school at Ibstock, a special school in Roehampton.
In 1941, Gillian went to Colet Court, a junior school. The next year, she passed the exam to go to St Paul's Girls' School. While there, she became very interested in art. She even taught art to children in parts of London that had been damaged by bombs. She did this with her school friend, Shirley Williams.
After school, Gillian decided to go to art college. In 1946, she was accepted into the Slade School of Fine Art. But she was only sixteen, which was too young to start there. So, she went to the Camberwell School of Art instead. She studied there from 1946 to 1950.
Teaching Career
After finishing art school, Gillian Ayres worked part-time at the AIA Gallery in London from 1951 to 1959. Then, she started teaching art. During the 1960s and 1970s, she taught at several places. She became friends with other painters like Howard Hodgkin and Robyn Denny.
In 1959, she was asked to teach at Bath Academy of Art for six weeks. She ended up staying there until 1965. For much of that time, she shared a studio with another artist, Malcolm Hughes.
From 1965 to 1978, she was a senior lecturer at Saint Martin's School of Art in London. In 1978, she became the head of painting at Winchester School of Art. She was the first woman in the UK to hold such a position. In 1981, she stopped teaching. She moved to an old house in north-west Wales to focus on painting full-time.
Painting Style
Gillian Ayres' early paintings used thin paint and simple colors. But her later works, made with oil paint, were much more exciting and colorful. She often used a thick painting style called impasto, where the paint stands out from the canvas.
One of her first big projects was in 1957. An architect asked her to decorate the dining hall at South Hampstead High School in London. These paintings were very special. They were covered up with wallpaper for many years but were found again in 1983. They were almost perfectly preserved!
Gillian usually gave her paintings titles after they were finished. Titles like Anthony and Cleopatra (1982) or A Midsummer Night (1990) don't describe exactly what's in the painting. Instead, they are meant to match the feeling or mood of the artwork.
Printmaking Process
Gillian Ayres also loved making prints. She worked with printmakers like Jack Shirreff and Peter Kosowicz. In 1998, she made her first prints, a group of three etchings, with the Alan Cristea Gallery. This gallery showed her work in many solo exhibitions and art shows around the world. Her prints were also displayed in museums like the National Museum Cardiff in Wales and the CAFA Art Museum in Beijing.
Solo Exhibitions and Collections
Gillian Ayres had many solo art shows. Her first one was in London in 1956. Since 1980, she has had over 25 solo exhibitions. These include shows at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford (1981), the Serpentine Galleries in London (1983), and the Royal Academy of Arts (1997).
Her art can be found in many important collections. Some of these include the Tate Gallery in London, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Awards and Recognition
Gillian Ayres received several awards for her art. In 1963, she won the Japan International Art Promotion Association Award. In 1975, she received money from the Arts Council of Great Britain to help her art. She was a runner-up for the John Moores Painting Prize in 1982. In 1989, she was nominated for the famous Turner Prize.
She was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1986. In 1991, she became a Royal Academician. This means she was chosen as a member of the Royal Academy of Arts, a group of leading artists. She was later made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2011.
Momart Fire (2004)
Sadly, on May 24, 2004, a fire broke out at a storage warehouse in London. This warehouse belonged to an art-storage company called Momart. Fourteen of Gillian Ayres' artworks were destroyed in this fire.
Personal Life
In 1951, Gillian Ayres married another painter named Henry Mundy. They had two sons. Even after they divorced, they continued to live together.
In 1987, Gillian moved from Wales to a very old cottage in Morwenstow, near the border of Devon and Cornwall. She faced some health challenges during her life. In the late 1970s, she was very ill for a few days. In 2003, she had a heart attack.
Death
Gillian Ayres passed away in a hospital in North Devon on April 11, 2018. She was 88 years old. After her death, the Alan Cristea Gallery, which had shown her work for twenty years, described her as "immensely courageous, independent and determined in both her art and her lifestyle." Her art continued to be shown in exhibitions after she died.
