Gillian Ayres

Teaching Gillian Ayres worked part-time at the AIA Gallery in Soho from 1951-59 before starting a teaching career.

For much of her time at Corsham she shared a teaching studio with Malcolm Hughes. She was a senior lecturer at Saint Martin's School of Art, London, from 1965 to 1978 and became head of painting at Winchester School of Art in 1978, the first female teacher in the UK to hold such a position.

One of Ayres' early projects was a 1957 commission by architect Michael Greenwood to decorate the South Hampstead High School dining hall in north London. The murals, described as "the only true British contribution to American abstract expressionism", were quickly covered over with wallpaper before being rediscovered in 1983 in nearly perfect condition.

Printmaking Ayres was a dedicated printmaker, making prints with Jack Shirreff in Wiltshire, and in her later life with Peter Kosowicz at Thumbprint Editions, London. Ayres made her first print project, a group of three etchings, with the Alan Cristea Gallery in 1998. The Alan Cristea Gallery went on to present her works in seven solo exhibitions at the gallery, and numerous group exhibitions, and at art fairs around the world. Several of her solo exhibitions toured to institutes in the UK, and the gallery worked in partnership with institutions and museums, including Jerwood Gallery, Hastings (2010), the National Museum Cardiff, Wales (2017) and CAFA Art Museum, Beijing (2017) to bring Ayres’ work to wider audiences through major exhibitions of her paintings, drawings and prints.

Solo exhibitions and collections Ayres had a number of solo exhibitions, the first at Gallery One, London, in 1956. including the Museum of Modern Art Oxford, Oxford (1981); Serpentine Gallery, London (1983); Royal Academy of Arts, London (1997); Southampton City Art Gallery (2005); Jerwood Gallery (2010); National Museum Wales, Cardiff (2017) and CAFA Art Museum, Beijing (2017). Her art is also featured in the collections of numerous galleries, including Tate Gallery, London; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester; Swindon Museum and Art Gallery; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Yale Center for British Art, New Haven and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Awards Ayres was awarded the Japan International Art Promotion Association Award in 1963, and in 1975 she was awarded a bursary by the Arts Council of Great Britain.

She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1986, and in 1991 became a Royal Academician. The documentary, according to Ayres, presented an unfair view of the older members of the Academy. She objected to the inclusion of Marcus Harvey's portrait of serial killer Myra Hindley in the exhibition.

Momart fire (2004)

On 24 May 2004, 14 of Ayres' pieces were destroyed in a fire at a warehouse of the art-storage company Momart in the Cromwell industrial estate in Leyton, east London.

Personal life Ayres married the painter Henry Mundy in 1951. They divorced in 1976, but continued to live together. They had two sons.

In 1987, Ayres moved from Wales to a 15th-century cottage at Morwenstow, on the Devon–Cornwall border. Upon her death, she was described as "immensely courageous, independent and determined in both her art and her lifestyle" by the Alan Cristea Gallery, who represented her for twenty years. Her work was shown posthumously, alongside that of Rachel Jones and Nao Matsunaga in 2019 at the New Art Centre, Salisbury, Wiltshire.