Adam's IMPORTANT IRISH ART 8th December 2021

38 23 BREON O’CASEY (1928-2011) Bird into Blue Acrylic on canvas, 91.5 x 122cm (36 x 48’’) Signed, inscribed and dated 2008 on stretcher verso Provenance: With the Peppercanister Gallery, Dublin. € 8,000 - 12,000 The son of playwright, Sean O’Casey, and actress, Eileen Reynolds, Breon O’Casey was born into an artistic family but he renounced the written word in favour of something more visceral. Studying first at the Anglo-French Art Centre in London, he then concluded his formal art train- ing at Saint Martin’s School of Art. Perhaps his greatest education though came from working with his fellow artists in St. Ives, Cornwall. Breon O’Casey moved to St. Ives in 1959 and took up an apprenticeship with Denis Mitchell. He worked with Mitchell until 1961 when he then apprenticed under Barbara Hepworth. Mingling with the St. Ives community, O’Casey became adept in various media including jewellery mak- ing, printing and weaving. However, his true love was for painting and sculpture and it was to this that O’Casey dedicated the last decade of his life. Painted only a few years before he died, Bird into Blue is indicative of a lifetime perfecting and playing with art and design. O’Casey was drawn to ancient and non-western art and this influ- ence can clearly be seen in the primitive lack of perspective and flattened subject matter. Birds make frequent appearances in O’Casey’s work, his paintings picking them out as reduced and abstracted forms. Yet, despite this minimalistic approach, his birds are imbued with a per- sonality that transcends their basic shape. Helena Carlyle, October 2021