Michael Ayrton was a British painter, printmaker, sculptor, critic, broadcaster and novelist. His sculptures, illustrations, poems and stories often focused on the subjects of flight, myths, mirrors and mazes.
He was also a stage and costume designer, working with John Minton on the 1942 John Gielgud production of Macbeth at the age of nineteen, and a book designer and illustrator for Wyndham Lewis’s The Human Age trilogy. An exhibition, Word and Image (National Book League, 1971), explored Lewis’s and Ayrton’s literary and artistic connections. He also collaborated with Constant Lambert and William Golding.