Michael Ayrton

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Michael Ayrton: Talos in Cambridge
Michael Ayrton: Minotaur in Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Michael Ayrton , born as Michael A. Gould (born February 20, 1921 in St. Pancras / London , † November 17, 1975 in Hampstead / London) was a British painter, graphic artist, sculptor and author. Artistically it can be assigned to an expressionistically influenced surrealism; At times he was referred to as a representative of neo-romanticism.

Life

Michael A. Gould was the son of the artist Gerald Gould (1885-1936) and the Labor Party politician and later MP Barbara Ayrton (1886-1950), whose maiden name he took when his father died. He was married to Elisabeth Evelyn Walshe (1910-1991) and lived in Toppesfield , Essex .

Ayrton made extensive trips to France, Italy and Greece in his youth. A trip to Barcelona as a 14-year-old during the Spanish Civil War in 1935/36 went off without a hitch, as he was quickly brought back by his mother and sent to a cousin in Vienna . There he made his first art experiences at the Vienna Albertina , where he studied and copied the old master drawings. After the annexation of Austria he returned to England; there he attended various art schools: Heatherley School of Fine Art and St John's Wood Art School. In 1939 he had a studio in Paris with John Minton , with whom he studied with Eugene Berman and exhibited together in London in 1942. Occasionally Ayrton also worked in Giorgio de Chirico's Paris studio .

Ayrton had been ailing from childhood, so the Royal Air Force retired him shortly after being drafted during World War II . From 1942 he worked for two years as an art teacher at the Camberwell School of Art before he started as an art critic at the Spectator in 1944 and now began to write a series of essays and art history books. He worked as a set designer and primarily as a book illustrator, for example for Wyndham Lewis ' The Human Age trilogy and for William Golding . His own and self-illustrated book, Tittivulus Or The Verbiage Collector, is about a devil's battle with words. He also worked with Constant Lambert . In the late 1950s, under the influence of Henry Moore, he began sculpting. In the 1960s he dealt with the Minotaur myth, wrote a novel The Maze Maker and produced a variety of sculptures, paintings and drawings on it, on Daedalus and Icarus and on other topics of ancient mythology .

Works

  • Jupiter and Antiope , 1940, pen drawing
  • Fête Champêtre , 1940/41, pen drawing and gouache
  • The Temptation of Saint Anthony , 1942/43, oil on wood,
  • Skull Vision , 1943, oil on panel
  • Minotaur , 1968/69, bronze sculpture

Fonts (selection)

  • British drawing . London: Collins 1946
  • Aspects of British Art . London: Collins 1947
  • Tittivulus or The verbiage collector . London: Max Reinhardt 1953
  • The Maze Maker: a novel . New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1967
  • Wyndham Lewis, 1882-1957. Michael Ayrton, b. 1921 . National Book League (Great Britain) 1971

literature

  • Peter Cannon-Brookes: Michael Ayrton: an illustrated commentary . Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery 1978
  • Justine Hopkins: Michael Ayrton: a biography . German, London 1994
  • Jacob E. Nyenhuis: Myth and the Creative Process: Michael Ayrton and the myth of Daedalus, the Maze Maker . Wayne State University Press, Detroit 2003

Web links

Commons : Michael Ayrton  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Heatherley School of Fine Art in the English Wikipedia: en: Heatherley School of Fine Art ; St John's Wood Art School at Wikipedia: en: St John's Wood Art School
  2. ↑ Wyndham Lewis: The Human Age , consists of The Childermass ; Monstre Gai ; Malign Fiesta
personal data
SURNAME Ayrton, Michael
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gould, Michael A. (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British painter, printmaker, sculptor and author
DATE OF BIRTH February 20, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH 17th November 1975
Place of death London