22 / 196
22
10
Mary Swanzy HRHA (1882 - 1978)
Cubist Landscape
Oil on canvas, 40.6 x 63.5cm (16 x 25”)
Provenance: Important Irish Art Sale, these rooms, May 1997 where purchased by present owners
Exhibited: “Mary Swanzy Exhibition”, Pyms Gallery, London, Autumn 1986, Catalogue No. 12
Literature: “Mary Swanzy” by Julian Campbell, Pyms Gallery, London 1986, page 45 (illustrated black
and white)
Mary Swanzy, born in Dublin, was one of the first Irish Modernist painters. She held fifteen known
solo exhibitions during her lifetime in Dublin, Paris, London and America. A further five have been
held post-humously, an almost unique achievement in twentieth century Irish art and evidence of her
dedication and ambition.
Swanzy was introduced to the early Cubist work of Picasso in 1906 at the home of Gertude Stein
while studying in Paris. Following the death of her father, an ophthalmic surgeon, in 1913, Swanzy
went to Italy to pursue her career.
This fine painting,
Cubist Landscape
, may be classed within the school of Synthetic Cubism where
vision becomes the subject of painting. How fitting for the daughter of an eye surgeon to pursue the
modernist concerns of seeing. Swanzy first exhibited at the Salon des Independants in 1914 at the
peak of Robert and Sonia Delauney’s influential form of Salon Cubism, known alternately as Or-
phism or Synchronism. She became a committee member of the Salon in 1920.
Swanzy’s extensive facility for colour is demonstrated here, using a circular motif she frames the white
pillars along a continued linear construct, not unlike that of a formal vanishing point. She breathes
life into a formal study by the use of a close palette of subtle contrasts and vivid colour. Swanzy does
not follow a rigorous theory but builds on her own knowledge to create a unique interpretation of the
emerging ideas of the period.
After a period of extensive travel London became her home where she lived quietly, always painting
for over fifty years. In 1946 she exhibited with Braque, Vlaminck and Dufy in St George’s Gallery,
London followed by one woman show there the following year. It has been suggested that she is per-
haps Ireland’s only Cubist landscape painter.
Liz Cullinane 2014
€10,000 - 15,000