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Gillian Ayres
Shortlisted: 1989

Gillian Ayres's large, abstract paintings have a distinctive exuberance. Her titles help to suggest a particular mood, but her subjects always remain elusive. She was influenced by American Abstract Expressionism in the 1950s, but sees her work as part of a European tradition: 'Titian, Rubens and Matisse are the greatest painters, unashamedly, of sheer beauty but they also used the medium to the fullest in every sense before or since.'

Gillian Ayres was born in Barnes, London in 1930. From 1946 to 1950 she studied at Camberwell School of Art and in 1989 she was one of the artists commended for the Turner Prize. Ayres was selected because of the mature quality of her painting, as established by the works shown at the Arnolfini Gallery.

This information has been taken from The Turner Prize: Twenty Years, by Virginia Button, Tate Publishing, 2003.

View Gillian Ayres in the Tate Collection