London 1921 - 1975 London

Michael Ayrton, born in London in 1921, was an English artist best known for his sculpture (though he produced paintings and prints and wrote numerous articles, essays and radio broadcasts as well). Ayrton had plans for an artistic career from an unusually early age, leaving school at just 14 years old to start work as a painter.

Ayrton’s sheer determination and focus in his own work, his rejection of the artistic trends which flooded the mid-20th century, meant that he was all too isolated from mainstream criticism and he has remained relatively little known. He died in 1975 and is only now beginning to gain the attention he has long deserved.