Gillian Ayres OBE

Sundark Blues

1994

Not on display

Artist: Gillian Ayres OBE 1930–2018
Medium: Oil paint on canvas
Dimensions: Support: 2442 × 2136 mm
support: 2442 × 2136 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Purchased with assistance from the Friends of the Tate Gallery 1995
Reference: T07003

Display caption

Ayres referred to a work like Sundark Blues as a ‘bloody big painting’ and its size suggests a shift of focus. As the critic Martin Gayford noted: ‘These are pictures vast enough – like a Titian altarpiece – to affect one’s whole environment when in front of them. You are not looking into them; it is more as if you were inside them. At the same time, they are intimate, since you are aware that every mark represents the movement of Ayres’s arm or hand.’

Gallery label, October 2019

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