Avray Wilson is Britain’s only Action painter.
Born on the multi-cultural island of Mauritius in 1914, Avray Wilson came to Abstraction following years of scientific research into the source of human aesthetics. Having graduated from Cambridge University with a degree in biology in 1938, Avray Wilson used his scientific knowledge to further his painting. Once he discovered that colour is not matter but energy, that an image could be alive as a living cell under a microscope, and that human art-making is a reflection of Nature’s Art Making, Avray Wilson arrived at full abstract gestural painting during the early 1950's. His explosions of colour and shapes burst in strength and liveliness, and are in their dignity and abstract grandeur challenging our predisposed understanding of what art should be.
Avray Wilson himself commented on his scientific background:
'I studied biology hoping that it would provide me with an explanation of the wonder of life. But the claim that life was no more than a molecular mechanism, led me to join the ranks of 'vitalist' biologists, who recognised that life, like beauty, was a quality, not a thing. Artists do not usually need a justification for art. The power of art is convincing enough. But my scientific background obliged me to find an explanation of nature's art, which I felt sure would provide me with the firmest justification for human art.'
Vitalism in biology implies a natural transcendental level, which is not material or spatial, the source of vitality. Here was also an explanation of nature's art, as the revelation of transcendental qualities in life and Nature. The artist's mind could be guided from the same source to create 'vitalistic' imageries.
'In aspiring to a vitalistic painting, biology had taught me the key importance of form in the expression of vitality. At profound molecular levels, vitally involved forms could be expressed in complex geometries, indicating that the visible 'organic' forms of life had a profound geometric basis.
During the 1950's and 1960's Avray Wilson enjoyed a celebrated status with no less than twelve one-man shows in galleries in London, Paris and Brussels. The British intellectual elites welcomed a new radical form of art and in London, Avray Wilson showed alongside Sandra Blow, Lynn Chadwick, Anthony Caro, Paul Feiler, Peter Lanyon, Patrick Heron, Ivon Hitchens, Terry Frost, William Scott, Richard Smith, William Turnbull and Bryan Wynter. In Paris and Brussels, Avray Wilson’s works were esteemed by Hans Hartung, Georges Mathieu, Jean-Paul Riopelle and Pierre Soulages, with whom he exhibited at the Galerie Internationale (1956) and Galerie Helios (1957). The Redfern Gallery in London hosted seven one-man shows between 1957 and 2002.
In 1956, Avray Wilson together with Halima Nalecz and Denis Bowen founded the New Vision Centre Gallery, London, a showcase for radical artistic expression by mostly refugee painters from Polish and German Jewish descent.
In 1967, traumatised by the death of his young son, Avray Wilson retired from the commercial art market. During the 1970's Avray Wilson concentrated on writing and his publication Art as Revelation (1981) was visionary in its belief that humans suffer from disintegration at all levels: physical, mental, social and ecological. Thus, Avray Wilson pleased for an urgent search for a life-enhancing wholeness in which the arts could play a central role for its integrating powers.
Throughout his lifetime, Avray Wilson continually moved between continents, countries, houses and studios. A true nomad at heart, his wife and children were his only anchor and constant compass. Avray Wilson was equally at ease in the seclusion of his scientific lab or painting studio as in the spotlight at a party. His universal mind never stopped reading, studying, writing and researching the fields of mineralogy, science, psychology, alchemy and religion in order to enrich his art making.
Selected publications by Frank Avray Wilson:
Poems of Hope and Despair. Port Louis, Mauritius, 1949.
Art into Life. An Interpretation of Contemporary Trends in Painting. Centaur Press, London, 1958.
Art as Understanding. A Painter's Account of the Last Revolution in Art and its Bearing on
Human Existence as a Whole. Foreword by Herbert READ, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, (1963).
Alchemy as a Way of Life. C.W. Daniel Company Ltd., London, 1976.
Nature Regained. An Examination of the Meaning of Nature and of the Human Role in the
Creation. Branden Press, Boston, 1976.
Crystal and Cosmos. Foreword by Gordon Rattray TAYLOR, Coventure Ltd., London, 1977.
Art as Revelation. The Role of Art in Human Existence. Centaur Press, Frontwell, Sussex, 1981.
The Work of Creation. Cosmos, Consciousness and the New Sciences. Coventure Ltd., London, 1985.
Seeing is Believing. Book Guild Publishing, Sussex, 1995.
Films by Frank Avray Wilson
Art in an Atomic Age, shown at ICA, London, 1959
Adventure in Abstract, shown at ICA, London, 1959
Experiments in Abstract, shown at ICA, London, 1959
Public collections include
British Museum, London
Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh,USA
Cheltenham Art Galleryand Museum, Cheltenham
City Art Gallery, Manchester
City Art Gallery, Leeds
Cleveland Museum of Modern Art, Ohio, USA
Durham University, Durham
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea
Imperial College, London
Leeds University, Leeds
Leicester Museum and Art Gallery, Leicester
National Museum of Gdañsk, Poland
National Museum of Wales, Cardiff
National Museum of Warsaw, Poland
Northampton Museum and Art Gallery, Northampton
Southampton City Art Gallery, Southampton
Toledo Art Gallery, Ohio, USA
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
Bibliography
FERMON, An Jo. Frank Avray Wilson: British Tachist. Artmedia Press Ltd, Whitford Fine Art, London, 2016.
Solo Exhibitions
2016, Frank Avray Wilson: British Tachist, Whitford Fine Art, London.
2011, Frank Avray Wilson: The Vital Years, Paisnel Gallery, London.
2003, Frank Avray Wilson: Early Works, Whitford Fine Art, London.
2002, Frank Avray Wilson, Paintings, Gouaches and Prints, The Redfern Gallery, London.
1986, Frank Avray Wilson: Recent Work, Warwick Arts Trust, London.
1961, Avray Wilson: Recent Gouaches, The Redfern Gallery, London; Avray Wilson: Recent Paintings, The Redfern Gallery, London; Avray Wilson, Galerie Fricker, Paris.
1960, Avray Wilson: New Paintings, The Redfern Gallery, London.
1958, Frank Avray Wilson, Galerie Craven, Paris.
1957, Avray Wilson: New Paintings, The Redfern Gallery, London; Avray Wilson, Galerie Helios Art, Brussels.
1956, Galerie Internationale, Paris.
1955, Frank Avray Wilson: Recent Paintings, AIA Gallery, London; L'Institut français, London.
1995, Frank Avray Wilson: Recent Paintings and Work from the 50s to the 80s, The Redfern Gallery, London.
1954, Obelisk Gallery, London.
1950, King Haakon Fund, Mauritius.
1944, King Haakon Fund, Mauritius.
Group Exhibitions
1951, Summer Show, The Redfern Gallery, London.
1952, Summer Show, The Redfern Gallery, London; London Group Annual Exhibition, New Burlington Galleries, London.
1953, Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy, London; Artists of Fame and Promise I, Leicester Galleries, London; Le Salon 1953, Société des Artistes français, Paris; AIA Autumn Exhibition, AIA Gallery, London.
1954, Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy, London; Artists of Fame and Promise II, Leicester Galleries, London; Abstract, Cubist, Formalist and Surrealist, The Redfern Gallery, London.
1955, Contemporary Painting and Sculpture London Group, AIA Travelling Exhibition,Southampton Art Gallery.
1956, New Vision First Exhibition, The Coffee House, London; Summer Exhibition, The Redfern Gallery, London; London Group Annual Exhibition, RBA Galleries, London; Contemporary Painting and Sculpture London Group, AIA Travelling Exhibition, Cheltenham Art Gallery.
1957, Metavisual, Tachiste, Abstract, The Redfern Gallery, London; Le peinture anglaise contemporaine: Metavisuel, Tachiste, Abstract, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Liège, travelling to Galerie du Perron, Geneva, and Galerie Creuze Salle Balzac, Paris; New Vision 1957, New Vision Gallery, The Coffee House, London; Summer Exhibition, The Redfern Gallery, London; Abstract 1957, AIA Gallery, London; Free Painters 5th Annual Exhibition, Walker's Gallery, London; Abstract and Tachiste Painting, Univision Gallery, Newcastle; Dimensions: British Abstract Art 1948 - 1957, O'Hana Gallery, London.
1958, Survey of Contemporary British Painting, Howard Wise Gallery, Cleveland, Ohio; Pittsburgh Bicentennial International Exhibition of Contemporary Painting and Sculpture, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh; New Trends in British Painting, New York Foundation, Rome; Guggenheim Painting Awards, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London; AIA 25th Anniversary Exhibition, RBA Galleries, London; Free Painter's Group, New Vision Gallery and Walker's Gallery, London; Abstract Art, Stone Gallery, Leeds.
1959, John Moores Biennale, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool; Six Young Painters, Arts Council Travelling Exhibition; Galerie Internationale, Paris; Architects' Choice, ICA Galleries, London; Summer Exhibition, The Redfern Gallery, London.
1960, The British Guggenheim Award Paintings, R.W.S. Galleries, London; Six Young Painters, Arts Council Travelling Exhibition, Hatton Gallery, Newcastle, Southampton Art Gallery and Leicester City Art Gallery; Six Young Painters, Arts Council, New York; Free Painter's Group Exhibition, Walker's Galleries, Woodstock Gallery, London; Critic's Choice, Arthur Tooth and Sons, London; Summer Exhibition, The Redfern Gallery, London; Art Alive, Northampton Art Gallery and Museum.
1961, John Moores Liverpool Exhibition 1961, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool; AIA Travelling Exhibition, Harrogate and Huddersfield City Art Galleries; Summer Exhibition, The Redfern Gallery, London; Commonwealth Vision Painters 1961, Commonwealth Institute, London.
1962, Summer Exhibition, The Redfern Gallery, London; Paintings, Drawings, Reliefs, AIA Gallery, London; Collector's Choice, Roland, Browse and Delbanco, London and Stone Gallery, Newcastle; The Free Painters' Group 9th Annual, F.B.A. Galleries, London; AIA Travelling Exhibition, Bowes Museum, Billingham.
1966, Summer Exhibition, The Redfern Gallery, London; 1966 Open Painting Exhibition, Arts Council, Ulster Museum, Belfast; 10th Anniversary Exhibition, New Vision Gallery at Stroud Municipal Art Gallery.
1967, British Sculpture and Paintings: Leicestershire Education Authority Collection,Whitechapel Art Gallery, London; Contemporary British Painting, Loch Haven Art Center, Orlando, USA.
1984, New Vision 56-66, Bede Gallery, Jarrow and Gdansk Museum, Poland.
1986, Post-War British Abstract Art, Austin Desmond Gallery, London.
1992, British Abstract Art of the 1950s and 60s, Belgrave Gallery, London.
1994, 20th Century Paintings, Belgrave Gallery, London.
1996, Spring Exhibition, The Redfern Gallery, London.
2001, Modern British, The Redfern Gallery, London.
2006, The Redfern Gallery: Artists and Friends, The Redfern Gallery, London.
2007, Metavisual, Tachiste, Abstract: Staking out New Territory, The Redfern Gallery, London.
2008, Summer Show: 25 Years of Post-War British Art 1952 - 1976, Paisnel Gallery, London.