Adam's IMPORTANT IRISH ART 8th December 2021

28 17 MARY SWANZY HRHA (1882-1978) Cubist Landscape, Trees, Houses Oil on canvas, 34 x 47.5cm (13¼ x 18½’’) Provenance: With Pyms Gallery, London, label verso; With Peppercanister Gallery, Dublin, where purchased by the current owner. € 20,000 - 30,000 Mary Swanzy was introduced to Picasso’s early cubist paintings in 1906 in Paris at Gertrude Stein’s home. She was one of the first Irish painters to investigate the new way of seeing, not for her the school of André Lhote or Albert Gleizes, the masters who informed the important work of subsequent Irish cubists Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone. In the 1920s she regarded herself primarily as a landscape painter and here in Cub- ist Landscape, Trees, Houses we see her unique interpretation of the major mod- ernist trend. Her use of dynamic, elliptical shapes alongside diagonals creates an energy and movement in this painting reminiscent of Italian Futurist paintings of a similar period. Swanzy’s facility for beautifully balancing colour with form creates a distinct ten- sion. While her continued use of perspective, against the laws of cubism, creates a sense of depth, despite the flattened picture plane. As with so many of her cub- ist paintings Swanzy’s love of mathematics, especially the geometry of her native Georgian city, is very much in evidence. Liz Cullinane, 2021