page_title: Alasdair Gray
section_title: Visual art
hierarchical_section_title: Alasdair Gray / Visual art
caption_attribution_description: English: A professionally shot photograph of part of Alasdair Gray's ceiling mural in the Oran Mor in Glasgow, painted about 2004.
context_page_description: Alasdair James Gray was a Scottish writer and artist. His first novel, Lanark, is seen as a landmark of Scottish fiction. He published novels, short stories, plays, poetry and translations, and wrote on politics and the history of English and Scots literature. His works of fiction combine realism, fantasy, and science fiction with the use of his own typography and illustrations, and won several awards.
  He studied at Glasgow School of Art from 1952 to 1957. As well as his book illustrations, he painted portraits and murals, including one at the Òran Mór venue and one at Hillhead subway station. His artwork has been widely exhibited and is in several important collections. Before Lanark, he had plays performed on radio and TV.
  His writing style is postmodern and has been compared with those of Franz Kafka, George Orwell, Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino. It often contains extensive footnotes explaining the works that influenced it. His books inspired many younger Scottish writers, including Irvine Welsh, Alan Warner, A. L. Kennedy, Janice Galloway Chris Kelso and Iain Banks.
context_section_description: After finishing art school, Gray painted theatrical scenery for the Glasgow Pavilion and Citizens Theatres, and worked as a freelance artist. His first mural was "Horrors of War" for the Scottish-USSR Friendship Society in Glasgow. In 1964 the BBC made a documentary film, Under the Helmet, about his career to date. Many of his murals have been lost; surviving examples include one in the Ubiquitous Chip restaurant in the West End of Glasgow, and another at Hillhead subway station. His ceiling mural (in collaboration with Nichol Wheatley) for the auditorium of the Òran Mór venue on Byres Road is one of the largest works of art in Scotland and was painted over several years. It shows Adam and Eve embracing against a night sky, with modern people from Glasgow in the foreground.
  In 1977–1978, Gray worked for the People's Palace museum, as Glasgow's "artist recorder", funded by a scheme set up by the Labour government. He produced hundreds of drawings of the city, including portraits of politicians, people in the arts, members of the general public and workplaces with workers. These are now in the collection at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum.
  His paintings and prints are held in the Kelvingrove, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Library of Scotland, the Hunterian Museum, the Arts Council of England collection, and the Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art & Natural History. In 2014–2015 Gray had a major retrospective at the Kelvingrove; over 15,000 people visited the exhibition, which was entitled Alasdair Gray: From The Personal To The Universal. His first solo exhibition in London took place in late 2017 at the Coningsby Gallery in Fitzrovia and the Leyden Gallery in Spitalfields.
  Gray said that he found writing tiring, but that painting gave him energy. His visual art often used local or personal details to encompass international or universal truths and themes.
caption: Mural in the Òran Mór arts venue in Glasgow
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