Michael Ayrton

(1921-1975)

Michael Ayrton was renowned as a painter, print-maker, sculptor, designer and novelist. His varied output of sculptures, illustrations, poems and stories reveals an obsession with flight, myths, mirrors and mazes.
He was also a stage and costume designer, working with John Minton on the 1942 John Gielgud production of Macbeth at the age of nineteen, and a book designer and illustrator for Wyndham Lewis's The Human Age trilogy. An exhibition, Word and Image (National Book League 1971), explored Lewis's and Ayrton's literary and artistic connections.

Ayrton studied art at Heatherley School of Fine Art and St John's Wood Art School, then in Paris under Eugène Berman, where he shared a studio with John Minton.

In 1961 he wrote and created many works associated with the myths of the Minotaur and Daedalus, the legendary inventor and maze builder, including a number of bronze sculptures and the pseudo-autobiographical novel The Maze Maker.

Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery organised a major retrospective exhibition in 1977 which subsequently went on tour.

His work is held in several important collections including the Tate Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Fry Art Gallery, Essex.

Important archive of original material

Series of 7 A.Ls.s, 1 autographed postcard and 3 T.Ls.s, one signed "Daedalus1", to Sir David Piper, 13pp., 4to, Bradfields, Essex, 15th January 1972-12th November 1975, relating i.a. to the exhibition of his work called Maze and Minotaur for the catalogue of which Piper wrote an introduction, to other exhibitions at the Fitzwilliam and Ashmolean Museums, to the acquisition and unveiling of his statue, Talos the Topos, by the City of Cambridge, and to many plans for the future which were overtaken by his sudden death, with related correspondence, prospectuses, etc.

£2,250.00

Mantic Figure

1963

Bronze edition of six

15 x 5 x 4.75 inches

Literature:

Michael Ayrton

bronzes, paintings, collages and drawings

1962-1964

Grosvenor Gallery

Notes:

The Mantic Figure forms part of the Oracle Sequence, and according to a file copy from the Gallery archive, all six Mantic Figures sold during the exhibition at £180.00 each.