Adam's IMPORTANT IRISH ART 31 MAY 2023

146 136 GERDA FRÖMEL (1931-1975) Head (c.1972/73) White marble, 36cm (14¼”) high On a rectangular steel base, 20.2 x 26.5cm (8 x 10¾”) Provenance: With The Dawson Gallery, Dublin, May 1973, where purchased, thence by descent to the present owners; The Estates of Dr. John & Mary Esther O’Driscoll, Kildare € 7,000 - 10,000 Born in Czechoslovakia in 1931, Greda Frömel was the eldest of four children born to German parents. When she was 14 the family moved to Vienna. Three years later she was attending the Stuttgart Academy of Art and Design studying sculpture, winning in 1949 the Scholarship for Young Artists. In 1953 she spent a year in Ireland, and while there met Werner Schür- mann, a young German sculptor and musician, whom she married in 1955. It was in Ireland that she began to exhibit her work in earnest. By 1954 she had begun to exhibit in the Irish Exhibition of Living Art (IELA) and continued to show there regularly, while in 1962 and ‘63 she exhib- ited at the Independent Artists, also exhibiting at the Oireachtas, where in 1973 she won the Gold Medal. In 1964 and 1970 she had solo exhibitions with Leo Smith in The Dawson Gallery in Dublin, and had a joint show there with Michael Scott in 1967. Frömel’s work achieved critical acclaim and with it many important commissions, including in 1970 her polished stainless steel work entitled Sails for P.J.Car- roll and Son, Dundalk. This was, at the time, the larg- est private sculptural commission in Ireland. Frömel also worked in stained glass for churches in Ireland and Germany, including a stained glass-window at St Brigid’s Cathedral, Kildare. Prof. Paula Murphy noted that Frömel brought several influences to bear in her work, “from Brancusi, in her smooth ovoid forms worked in stone”, (as in the pres- ent work), “and Giacometti, in her seemingly melting, textured bronze sculptures, to the Henry Moore cir- cle, notably Hepworth and Ben Nicholson, in her ab- stract discs and rectangular forms.” Frömel died in a drowning accident, while on holidays with her children in Co. Mayo, at the age of 44. The following year a major retrospective exhibition of her work, organised jointly by the Arts Council and the Goethe Institute, was held at Dublin’s Hugh Lane Gallery.