Gillian Ayres

This is the first book on major British abstract painter Gillian Ayres, one of the most widely loved and respected of contemporary British artists. As a young artist in the 1950s, Ayres was closely involved with leading British abstract artists, including Roger Hilton. She was quick to respond to both European tachism and American abstract expressionism, creating a body of work that placed her in the forefront of her generation. In London in the early 1960s she was the only woman artist represented in the important Situation exhibitions, showing large paintings combining oil and household paint that aimed for the natural sublime using the most radical drip and pour techniques of action painting. For many years from then on Ayres's career was marked by diversities of style and manner. In the 1960s she created glamorously decorative images in keeping with the hedonistic mood of the time, but by the early 1970s she had returned to an extreme and often austere painterly abstraction. Inspired by the painting of Hans Hofmann, Ayres returned to oil painting in the late 1970s and went on to develop a distinctively colourful and allusive style, creating some of the most richly sensuous images in recent British art.This book traces the creative career of a remarkable artist, placing it within historical, contemporary and critical contexts. With over a hundred and thirty colour reproductions of her paintings it is an essential contribution to the history of British art in the second half of the twentieth century.

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Authors Biography

Mel Gooding is an art critic, writer and exhibition organiser. He graduated M.A (English) from the University of Sussex in 1966. He has written many catalogue texts and over the last fifteen years contributed extensively to the art press and to magazines and newspapers. His monographs on artists include Bruce McLean(1990), Michael Rothenstein's Boxes (1991) Patrick Heron (1994), Gillian Ayres (2001) Ceri Richards (2002), Patrick Hayman (2005), John Hoyland: Imagination and Image (2006) and herman de vries: chance and change (2006). He has written on art and architecture: William Alsop Architect (1992), Joze Plecnik :The National and University Library, Ljubljana (1997); Public: Art; Space (1998) Abstract Art (2001); Song of the Earth: European Artists in the Landscape (2002). With Redstone Press he has edited Surrealist Games (1991), Alphabets and Other Signs (1991), The Paradox Box (1996), The Playful Eye (1999), Psychobox (2004), and several Redstone Diaries. He has curated many exhibitions, including Ceri Richards Graphics at the National Museum of Wales and tour in 1979-80, F.E. McWilliam: Retrospective at the Tate Gallery in 1989, Michael Rothenstein: A Retrospective at Stoke on Trent and tour 1989-90, William Furlong/ Alan Johnston/ Simon Patterson/ Bruce McLean/ Prunella Clough/ Gillian Ayres etc. at the Customs House, South Shields (1995-1999), Mary Fedden: Retrospective at the Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, 1996, a select retrospective of the Czech sculptor Stanislav Kolibal at the 1998 Edinburgh Festival, Themes and Variations: Ceri Richards Retrospective at the National Museum of Wales and tour (2002-3), Gillian Ayres: Select Retrospective, Royal West of England Academy, 2004. He was Senior Research Fellow at Edinburgh College of Art from 1998 to 2005. He was made a professor at Wimbledon School of Art in 2006.

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