Michael Ayrton (1921-1975)

Ayrton was an English artist and writer who worked as a painter, printmaker, sculptor and designer, and also as a critic and broadcaster.

He was also a stage and costume designer, working with John Minton on the 1942 John Gielgud production of Macbeth at just 19 years old. He designed and illustrated Wyndham Lewis’ The Human Age trilogy. He also collaborated on projects with Constant Lambert and William Golding.

In 1977 Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery held a major retrospective of his work which subsequently went on tour.

Michael Ayrton (1921-1975), Shore II, 1959

 

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Panel, 14 x 20 in (35.8 x 51 cm)
Signed

Collection: Graham Slater
Literature: Jacob Nyenhuis Myth and The Creative Process; Michael Ayrton and The Myth of Daedalus 2012, p.232(80)
Exhibited: Folio Society Michael Ayrton 1960

In the late 1950’s Ayrton immersed himself both in the history and the landscape of Greece. Justine Hopkins identifies the current view as looking from the ruins on Delos towards the island of Rinia. For Ayrton the landscape was ‘’ silver and honey and all changing under the light, you must contain it as an idea before you can paint it…. It is a sculptured land, a land of bone and muscle’’.

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