21 Facts About Gillian Ayres

Gillian Ayres is best known for abstract painting and printmaking using vibrant colours, which earned her a Turner Prize nomination.

Gillian Ayres was born to Florence and Stephen Ayres on 3 February 1930 in Barnes, London, the youngest of three sisters.

In 1941, Ayres was sent to Colet Court, the junior school for St Paul's, Hammersmith.

Gillian Ayres passed the entrance exam for St Paul's Girls' School the following year, and developed an interest in art while there.

Gillian Ayres was advised to apply to the Camberwell School of Art and studied there from 1946 to 1950.

Gillian Ayres held a number of teaching posts through the 1960s and 1970s, becoming friends with painters such as Howard Hodgkin, Robyn Denny and Roger Hilton.

Gillian Ayres 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.

Gillian Ayres left teaching in 1981, and moved to an old rectory on the Llyn Peninsula in north-west Wales to become a full-time painter.

One of Gillian Ayres' early projects was a 1957 commission by architect Michael Greenwood to decorate the South Hampstead High School dining hall in north London.

Gillian Ayres was a dedicated printmaker, making prints with Jack Shirreff in Wiltshire, and in her later life with Peter Kosowicz at Thumbprint Editions, London.

Gillian Ayres made her first print project, a group of three etchings, with the Alan Cristea Gallery in 1998.

Gillian Ayres had a number of solo exhibitions, the first at Gallery One, London, in 1956.

Gillian Ayres's art is 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.

Gillian 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.

Gillian Ayres was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1986, and in 1991 became a Royal Academician.

The documentary, according to Gillian Ayres, presented an unfair view of the older members of the Academy.

Gillian Ayres objected to the inclusion of Marcus Harvey's portrait of serial killer Myra Hindley in the exhibition.

Gillian Ayres was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2011 Birthday Honours.

On 24 May 2004,14 of Gillian 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.

Gillian Ayres died in hospital in North Devon on 11 April 2018, aged 88.

Gillian Ayres's work was shown posthumously, alongside that of Rachel Jones and Nao Matsunaga in 2019 at the New Art Centre, Salisbury, Wiltshire.