Tess Jaray obituary

Influential artist and teacher who explored architectural and pictorial space in her work

In 1960, on a travelling scholarship from the Slade School of Fine Art, Tess Jaray, who has died aged 88, made her first trip to Italy. At the Slade she had been taught by Ernst Gombrich, then Britain’s foremost historian of early Renaissance art. She arrived in Florence with her head full of painting, of Giotto and Duccio and Cimabue.

It was not these, though, who were to move the 22-year-old student most. “Nobody who heard Gombrich speak has ever forgotten it,” Jaray recalled 60 years later, “but he never talked about architecture. Going to Italy was like opening a door into paradise. It was truly shocking, in a wonderful way. Suddenly seeing, and moving in and around, buildings by Brunelleschi, Bramante and Alberti – I didn’t understand why one should be so affected by these extraordinary spaces. It took many years before I grasped that creating space is how we define ourselves, how we protect ourselves.”