VISUAL ARTS a sound Wales’ reaction colourful connection with the art of the abstract

The largest-ever UK exhibition of the work of abstract artist Gillian Ayres opens in Cardiff tomorrow. Rachel Mainwaring takes a closer look at the work of the painter and the influence Wales has had on her work...

Dance of the Ludi Magni

AMAJOR exhibition celebrating the bold and colourful work of one of Britain’s most renowned postwar abstract artists, Gillian Ayres, is on show at National Museum Cardiff.

Gillian Ayres is the largest exhibition of Ayres’ work ever seen in the UK and is open from Saturday April 8 to September 3 2017.

The exhibition in Cardiff presents over 40 works made from the early 1950s to the 1980s, giving special insight into the untold story of the influence of Wales on Ayres’ work.

From the 1950s Ayres was a regular visitor to Wales, staying in her sister’s cottage at Corris, near Cader Idris. The experience of the landscape had a powerful influence on her paintings.

In describing this period in her life Ayres said she started “to see the world like painting. When you went up a mountain there were these clouds coming in. One really started to see everything in paint”.

This connection to Wales strengthened when she lived and worked on the Llyn Peninsula in north-west Wales between 1981 and 1987.

During this time she lived and worked in the small village of Llaniestyn on the Llyn Peninsula.

This period was one of the most prolific of Ayres’ career and visitors to the exhibition will be able to view large scale canvases of the time, thickly painted in vibrant colours.

The striking surfaces of the paintings were manipulated into gestures and patterns using brush, fingers, and paint squeezed directly from the tube.

This exhibition takes visitors on a reverse chronological journey, starting with work made when Ayres was living and working in north Wales in the 1980s, through a period of stylistic change in the 1960s and ’70s, before ending with her pioneering abstract works from the 1950s.

Born in London in 1930, Ayres studied at Camberwell College of Art between 1945-50 and worked initially in London, later moving to Wales and then to Cornwall, where she currently lives.

Ayres, 87, was elected Royal Academician in 1991, awarded an OBE in 1986 and a CBE in 2011. Throughout her career Ayres has maintained a lifelong commitment to abstraction, and to this day continues to reinvent her own abstract language from her home and studio in Devon.

Melissa Munro, Curator of the exhibition, said, “Since the 1950s, Gillian Ayres has been a pioneer of abstract painting in Britain and we’re delighted to be hosting her work at the museum.

“The dramatic landscape of north Wales has been a key inspiration for artists for centuries and occupies an important role in Ayres’ own experience of Wales.

“The large, heavily textured canvases of the 1980s ‘Welsh period’ have become her most recognised and critically acclaimed paintings and it’s wonderful to have so many of them together on display here.

“The paintings will appeal to all ages but I think the colourful space will especially appeal to young people and we’ve organised a programme of fun and