Frank Avray Wilson

Frank Avray Wilson (1914–2009) was a British artist.

Born in Vacoas, Mauritius on 3 May 1914, he was one of the first British artists to use Tachist or Action painting techniques.

Career

He graduated from St John's College, Cambridge University with a degree in biology, before studying art in Paris and Norway. In 1953 he met Denis Bowen, and they formed the New Vision Group and, in 1956, the New Vision Centre Gallery near Marble Arch in central London. Avray Wilson had his first solo show at the Obelisk Gallery in 1954, before being included in the British Council's influential La Peinture Anglaise Contemporain, which toured in France and Switzerland. He also took park in the New York Foundation's New Trends in British Painting in Rome in 1957 and was shortlisted for the John Moore's prize exhibition in Liverpool in 1959. His auction record of £15,000 was set at Christie's, London, on 22 March 2012, for his 1957 oil on canvas Wish.

Collections

Avray Wilson's work can be seen in the following collections:

• the Victoria and Albert Museum
• the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
• the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff
• Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum
• Leeds City Art Gallery
• Manchester City Art Gallery
• Northampton Museum and Art Gallery
• Southampton City Art Gallery
• the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea
• the Hepworth, Wakefield

Selected exhibitions

• 1954: Obelisk Gallery, London
• 1956: Gallery Helios Art, Brussels
• 1957: British Council touring exhibition
• 1957: Metavisual, Tachist, Abstract, Redfern Gallery, London
• 1957: Galerie Craven, Paris
• 1958: New Trends in British Painting, Rome
• 1958: Survey of Contemporary British Painting, Howard Wise Gallery, New York
• 1959: John Moores Prize Exhibition, Liverpool
• 1959: Six Young Painters, Arts Council touring exhibition
• 1960: Art Alive, Northampton Museum and Art Gallery
• 1961: Avray Wilson, Redfern Gallery
• 1961: Commonwealth Vision, Commonwealth Institute
• 1986: Frank Avray Wilson, Warwick Arts Trust
• 1995: Frank Avray Wilson, Redfern Gallery, London
• 2010: Frank Avray Wilson - the Vital Years, Paisnel Gallery, London

Bibliography

Avray Wilson was the author of several books on art:

• Art into Life, 1958, Centaur Press
• Art as Understanding, 1963, Routledge and Kegan Paul
• Art as Revelation, 1981, Centaur Press, London
• Seeing is Believing, 1995, Book Guild

To mark his 1995 exhibition, the Redfern Gallery published Frank Avray Wilson: An exhibition of recent paintings and work from the 50s to 80s by Cathy Courtney.

References

• Frank Avray Wilson's obituary in The Independent