Frank Avray Wilson

Frank Avray Wilson (1914–2009) was a British abstract painter associated with the development of gestural and tachiste painting in post-war Britain. His work is characterised by energetic brushwork, strong colour and an interest in the physical and emotional force of paint.

Born in Mauritius, Avray Wilson studied biology at Cambridge University before turning fully to painting. His scientific background remained important to his thinking about art, particularly his interest in natural structures, growth and energy. He studied painting in France and Norway and by the early 1950s had committed himself to non-objective painting.

Avray Wilson became closely involved with the emerging abstract movement in Britain during the 1950s. In 1956 he helped establish the New Vision Centre Gallery in London with Denis Bowen and Halima Nalecz, which became an important platform for international abstract art and for artists associated with Tachisme and Art Informel.

His connection with The Redfern Gallery began early in this period. He first exhibited at the gallery in its Summer Exhibition of 1951 and was included in the important 1957 exhibition Metavisual, Tachiste, Abstract: Painting in England Today, which surveyed the impact of European Tachisme and American Abstract Expressionism on British painting. He subsequently held a series of solo exhibitions at the Redfern, and the gallery represented him for many years.

Avray Wilson’s paintings of the 1950s and 1960s are marked by sweeping gestures, layered pigment and intense contrasts of colour. Although non-representational, they frequently suggest organic movement and processes of growth, reflecting his longstanding interest in biology and in the relationship between scientific and artistic ways of understanding form.

Following a long period away from the commercial art world, Avray Wilson returned with a major solo exhibition at The Redfern Gallery in 1995. The gallery continued to show his work thereafter and included him in its fiftieth-anniversary exhibition celebrating the post-war period.

His work is held in public collections in Britain and abroad, including the Arts Council Collection, the British Museum, the Carnegie Museum of Art and the Cleveland Museum of Art.