Gillian Wise (1936, Ilford – 2020, Paris) was a British artist working on the application of concepts of rationality and geometry in her paintings and reliefs.
She studied art at the Wimbledon College of Art from 1954 to 1957 and then at the Central School of Arts and Crafts during 1959. During her studies, she exhibited with a group of Constructionist artists. She became part of the British constructivists in 1961, as its youngest member. The group was formed around Victor Pasmore and included Adrian Heath, John Ernest, Anthony Hill, Kenneth Martin, and Mary Martin.
Wise's works have a strong geometry base. She works on reliefs, structures with volume, and painting in space.
In 1968, she went to study in Prague on a UNESCO Fellowship award, and in 1969 she went to study Russian constructivism in Leningrad on a British Council scholarship. She met and married an architect, Adrian Ciobotaru there. She exhibited with a group of British artists in Finland, with whom she formed the Systems Group in 1970, working in systems-based abstraction. The group included Jeffrey Steele, Peter Lowe, Malcolm Hughes, Jean Spencer, Michael Kidner, John Ernest, and David Saunders. The Systems Group fell apart in 1975, on disagreements over its position on Marxism. In the mid-1970s, Wise attempted to create another group, Art Research Syndicate.
Gillian Wise taught at the Chelsea College of Art and Design and Central Saint Martins School of Art in the early seventies. Following her divorce from Ciobotaru, she went on to do a two-year fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Centre for Advanced Visual Studies (1982 – 84). Later she moved permanently to Paris.