Frank Avray Wilson is a pioneer of early British post-war Abstract Expressionism. Having graduated from Cambridge University with a degree in Biology in 1936, Avray Wilson developed his unique form of Abstraction following years of dedicated scientific research into the source of human aesthetics. Once he discovered that colour is not matter but energy, that an image could be as alive as a living cell under a microscope, and that human art-making is a reflection of Nature's, Avray Wilson was able to construct his own form of 'Surreality', creating paintings he called 'Hyper-Vital Imageries'. By the 1960s, Avray Wilson had exhibited widely in the United Kingdom, France, USA, and Japan.

During his varied career, Avray Wilson was also a lecturer and author, his works included ‘Art as Understanding' and 'Art as Revelation'. Avray Wilson was visionary in his belief that humans suffer from disintegration at all levels: physical, psychological, social and ecological. Thus, he pleaded for an urgent search for wholeness in which the arts could play out their integrating and invigorating powers.

MUSEUMS: British Museum, London; Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, USA; Cleveland Museum of Modern Art, Ohio, USA; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; The Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool; Leicester Museum and Art Gallery, Leicester; Northampton Museum and Art Gallery, Northampton; Southampton City Art Gallery, Southampton; Toledo Art Gallery, Ohio, USA; Victoria and Albert Museum, London.