MICHAEL AYRTON (1921 - 1975), MINOTAUR REVEALED

bronze (artist's proof, ed. 6)
inscribed '0/0' on base
Modelled in 1963
53CM WIDE, 42CM DEEP, 71CM HIGH

PROVENANCE
Private collection, Melbourne

EXHIBITED
Michael Ayrton, Grosvenor Gallery, London, 29 April-30 May 1964, cat. 5 (another cast)
Michael Ayrton, James Goodman Gallery, Buffalo, N.Y., 15 May-5 June 1965, cat. 27 (another cast)
Michael Ayrton, Mazelow Gallery, Toronto, 18 May-4 June 1965, cat. 22 (another cast)
Michael Ayrton, Seventeenth King's Lynn Festival, 1967, cat. 7 (another cast)
Michael Ayrton, Sears Vincent Price Gallery, Chicago, October-November 1967, cat. 33 (another cast)
Michael Ayrton, University of Essex, Colchester, 10-23 March 1968, cat. 7 (another cast)
Michael Ayrton: Sculpture 1956-58, Hamet Gallery, London, 4-29 March 1969, cat. 11 (another cast)
Michael Ayrton, Reading Museum Art Gallery, 14 June-15 July 1969, cat. 27 (another cast)
Michael Ayrton, Bruton Gallery, Bruton, Somerset, 9 October-6 November 1971, cat. 9 (another cast)
Word and Image I & II, National Book League, London, December 1971, cat. 81 (another cast
Michael Ayrton: The Maze: Bronzes, Drawings, Etchings 1962-1972, R.S. Johnston International Gallery, Chicago, November 1972, cat. 8 (another cast)
Michael Ayrton: Maze and Minotaur, Portsmouth City Art Gallery, 3 February-3 March 1973; Southampton City Art Gallery, 10 March-7 April; Holburne Museum, Bath, 14 April-12 May; Exeter City Art Gallery, 19 May-16 June; Rye Art Gallery, 23 June-4 August, cat. 5 (another cast)
Michael Ayrton, Pennsylvania State University, Philadelphia, 6 May-17 June 1973, cat. 1 (another cast)
Michael Ayrton: Retrospective 1939-1975, Austin/Desmond Fine Art, London, December 1990-January 1991, cat. 45 (another cast)

LITERATURE
Michael Ayrton and C.P. Snow, Drawings and Sculpture by Michael Ayrton (rev. ed.), Cory, Adams and McKay, London, 1966, illustrated (another cast), plate 150
Peter Cannon-Brookes, Michael Ayrton: An Illustrated Commentary, City Museums and Art Gallery, Birmingham, 1978, pp. 91-92; Justine Hopkins, Michael Ayrton: A Biography, Andre Deutsch, London, 1994, p. 293
Jacob E. Nyenhuis, Myth and the Creative Process: Michael Ayrton and the Myth of Daedalus, the Maze Maker, Wayne State University Press, Detroit, 2003, pp. 120 (illustrated, another cast), 253 (cat. 352).

'Based on an ox skull, this isolated exploration of forms reveals the Minotaur evolving out of his own bone [in an] intricate reversal of the Minotaur's anatomy …'
(Peter Cannon-Brookes, Michael Ayrton: An Illustrated Commentary, City Museums and Art Gallery, Birmingham, 1978, p. 91)