Artist: The Estate of Tess Jaray

For more than 60 years, Jaray developed a singular practice which explored pictorial and architectural space through abstract painting. Born in Vienna in 1937, Jaray came to the United Kingdom in 1938 as part of the flight of Jewish refugees from the Nazis. She studied at Saint Martin’s School of Art and the Slade School of Fine Art in the 1950’s. She was invited to return to the Slade in 1968 as the school’s first female lecturer, where she then taught for over thirty years. Her bold, illusory paintings combine a highly distinctive palette with floating, hard-edged motifs which are inspired by her encounters with Italian Renaissance and Middle Eastern architecture. Her compositions hint at the built environment through the isolation and repetition of details and motifs. While her practice touches upon certain aspects of Op Art, Minimalism and Colour Field painting, it resists formal categorisation.

Ben Hunter and Offer Waterman have jointly represented Tess Jaray since 2024. Jaray’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Sheffield City Art Gallery, UK; Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham, UK; Serpentine Gallery, London, UK; Adelaide Festival Centre, Australia and Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK. In 1995 she was made Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) in recognition of public commissions at Centenary Square, Birmingham, UK (1988–92); terrazzo floor in the forecourt of Victoria Station, London, UK (1986); and mural for the British Pavilion at Expo 67, Montreal, Canada (1967). In 2010 Jaray was elected a Royal Academician and in 2013, a Senior RA. Her work is held in numerous public collections including Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; Tate, London, UK; Belvedere Museum, Vienna, Austria; Mumok, Vienna, Austria; The British Museum, London, UK; Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Massachusetts, USA; and Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK; amongst others.

Tess Jaray 1937–2026 obituary:

The Guardian
The Telegraph
Artforum