Adam's Important Irish Art 27th March 2019

32 29 NORAH MCGUINNESS HRHA (1901-1980) Crows (1961) Oil on canvas, 46 x 66cm (18 x 26’’) Signed and dated (19)’61 Painted in 1961 and exhibited at the Dawson Gallery that year, ‘ Crows’ is strongly in- fluenced by McGuinness’s stay in the Algarve the same year. She came home early to escape the intense heat. In this consummately controlled work, the elongated husks of thistles and grasses silhouette a scene of haystacks in a sub-baked Irish field. Through a loose application of structural lines, the forms of the stacks and the distant town are lucidly sketched out, in a manner that is ultimately indebted to the artist’s understanding of cubism. McGuinness had studied with the cubist painter André Lhote in Paris in 1929-31 and continued to develop her understanding of the style throughout her career. Geometric patterning of strong blues and orange enhance the intensity of the composition and result in a syncopated surface that transforms the landscape into a modern decorative vision of colour and line. Róisín Kennedy, February 2019 € 15,000 - 20,000