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Michael Ayrton (British, 1921-1975) Invador 38.5cm (15in) high including base; 34cm (13 3/8in) high excluding base Conceived in 1972 image 1

Michael Ayrton (British, 1921-1975) Invador 38.5cm (15in) high including base; 34cm (13 3/8in) high excluding base Conceived in 1972 image 2

Michael Ayrton (British, 1921-1975) Invador 38.5cm (15in) high including base; 34cm (13 3/8in) high excluding base Conceived in 1972 image 3

Michael Ayrton (British, 1921-1975) Invador 38.5cm (15in) high including base; 34cm (13 3/8in) high excluding base Conceived in 1972 image 4

Lot 227^AR,TP

Michael Ayrton
(British, 1921-1975)
Invador 38.5cm (15in) high including base; 34cm (13 3/8in) high excluding base Conceived in 1972

15 April 2025, 10:00 BST

London, New Bond Street

Sold for £8,960 inc. premium

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Michael Ayrton (British, 1921-1975)

Invador
signed with initials 'MA' and numbered '0/12' (to foot)
bronze with a dark brown patina
38.5cm (15in) high including base; 34cm (13 3/8in) high excluding base
Conceived in 1972

Footnotes

This figure was initially conceived as one component of a larger, multi-part composition, Troy Maze. Here the advancing warrior peers through a small, irregularly-shaped window of neutral density Perspex, cut through a wall of solid bronze. The Perspex is both reflective and transparent, so that the figure sees through a mirrored image of himself; on the other side of the wall is a maze-form cast in relief on the bronze.

Invader developed from Troy Maze as a single figure, released, as it were, from the frustrations of maze and mirror. The prowling, predatory stance is as much a study in muscular tension as the Acrobats and Bathers of his earliest forays into sculpture, but this is a body honed, not for feats of gravity-defying balance, but for hunting and killing. Yet there is also a wariness about the figure which undercuts the implicit threat of violence - a thread of something vulnerable as well as savage, which the isolated form reveals in a way that was not apparent within the more complex composition.

[As originally conceived, the figure stood on a base of polished black marble which produced an inverted reflection as if in a mirror or still water. This creates another layer of tension: if the invader should glance down, he would confront his own image looking back out of an infinite depth of blackness. Nietzsche famously commented that if one looks too long into the abyss one may find it looking back; a quotation which Ayrton regarded as yet another endorsement of his own preoccupation with mirrors and the human condition, here applied to the fragile boundary of success and insanity inherent in the soldier's trade.]

We are grateful to Justine Hopkins for compiling this catalogue entry.

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