Austin Wright (1911 - 1997) was a sculptor who lived and worked in Yorkshire for 60 years.

He produced sculpture which reflected his interest in the Yorkshire landscape, the human figure and botanical forms. He used a variety of media – wood, plaster, lead, bronze – but was most known for his distinctive use of cast and welded aluminium from the 1960s onwards. 

Born in Chester, Wright studied modern languages at Oxford and held a number of teaching posts before turning to sculpture in 1940. He was awarded the Xavier da Silveira Acquisition Prize at IV Sao Paulo Biennal in 1957 for his work, The Argument. He was Gregory Fellow in Sculpture at Leeds University from 1961–64 and was awarded an Honorary Degree in 1977 by The University of York, where two of his sculptures can be found.

Alongside many sculptural commissions, Wright received commissions to design tapestries for cathedrals at Manchester, Wakefield and Derby in collaboration with the weaver Theo Moorman.

Wright’s work is in a number of private and public collections, including the Tate; Arts Council; National Museum of Wales, Cardiff; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; Leeds and York universities. He received many solo exhibitions with major retrospectives at Wakefield (1960), Newcastle upon Tyne (1974), the Yorkshire Sculpture Park (1984), Hull (1988) and York Art Gallery (2011).