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Impact and other works will be in the Michael Ayrton Retrospective Exhibition in Cork Street, London W1 from 29 January to 3 February 2007. Please contact us for your Private View invitation on art@brutongallery.co.uk, tel: 0870 747 1800 or www.modernsculptors.com for further information.
After studying art in London and Paris, Ayrton's first major commission, at the age of nineteen, was for stage designs on John Gielgud's 'Macbeth' in 1938. This led to a public career as art teacher, writer, art critic and popular broadcaster in the 1940's and 50's. Ayrton designed for theatre, film and ballet, influenced by his love of music and his friendship with the composer Constant Lambert, he exhibited in London with other English Neo-Romantics.
After he visited Italy in 1947, his paintings became more strongly sculptural, until with some practical guidance from Henry Moore, he began to sculpt and cast in bronze. Working visits to Italy and Greece absorbed him in the ancient classical myths, particularly that of Daedalus, Icarus and the Minotaur in its labyrinth.
He continued to explore these myths - the artist/inventor, the labyrinth and the man-monster within- in writing and in his art for the rest of his career. His works range from the life-size bronzes of Daedalus with Icarus and the Minotaur held in the labyrinth, to that of small bronze figures combining mirroring perspex to multiply their duality. As a printmaker and draughtsman his suite of Minotaur etchings revived realisations of the artist's creative power. |
Works by this Artist
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| Impact |
| Bronze & Perspex |
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