Frank Avray Wilson

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.

The first London showing of his work was in 1951 at The Redfern Gallery's Summer Exhibition. In 1953, Wilson met Denis Bowen and they formed the New Vision Group then, in 1956, the New Vision Centre Gallery, a showplace for abstract and other modern art 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 part 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. He later showed at Leicester Galleries, the Royal Academy of Arts and Austin/Desmond Fine Art amongst others. He was represented for many years by the Redfern Gallery and gained a reputation in Europe, notably in Belgium and in France where he also exhibited. Major retrospectives were held by the Paisnel Gallery in 2011 and by the Whitford Fine Art Gallery in 2016 and 2018.

Avray Wilson married Higford Eckbo, a Norwegian, on 28 April 1936, and they had four children: Wendy-Ann, Raymond, Jason, and Norman. His daughter, Anglo-Norwegian artist, Wendy-Ann Wilson, went on to marry an American architect, Thomas J. Holzbog, and is the mother of Arabella Holzbog.

Frank Avray Wilson (3 May 1914 – 1 January 2009) was a British artist, author and vegetarian. He was one of the first British artists to use Tachist or action painting techniques.

Wilson was born in Vacoas, Mauritius, in 1914, the son of Albert James Wilson, a sugar manufacturer, by his marriage to Anna Avray. He was educated at Brighton College and St John's College, Cambridge, where he took a degree in biology, before studying art in Paris and Norway.