Adam's IMPORTANT IRISH ART 27 MARCH 2024

34 24 LOUIS LE BROCQUY HRHA (1916-2012) Being (W1401), 1998 Watercolour, 61 x 46cm (24 x 18”) Signed and dated (19)’98 Provenance: With Taylor Galleries, Dublin, label verso € 10,000 - 15,000 From about the mid-1950s onwards, the individual human figure, conceived as a Presence , an isolated conscious- ness, has been at the heart of Louis le Brocquy’s work. In terms of the artistic tradition from which he emerged, that is unusual. All the more so given that, while previously he had made studies of individual figures (often children), he was more likely to paint compositions involving multiple figures. These works focussed intently on the relationships between people, be those relationships familial, amorous or socio-political. Then it is as if he began to zoom in on a single person in the group. He was perhaps prompted by a consideration of individuals who, more than is usual, experienced an enhanced sense of difference and isola- tion, just as he had earlier been drawn to Travellers as an outsider group in mainstream society. Around this time on a visit to Spain he was struck by the way the brilliant sunlight on whitewashed walls seemed to dissolve the human figure, making of it something ethere- al, half-imagined. This idea, of the human presence con- jured out of an amorphous ground of time and space, took firm root in his painting. Another significant factor was his developing relationship with the painter Anne Madden, coinciding with a period when she was immobilised by a back injury. It’s notable that he began to address the body as a fragile, living structure in his paintings. All of these things fed into the emergence of the head images that be- came a longterm preoccupation. Then, from the mid-1990s or so, there is a return to the body as presence in his work. This after a series of works centred on capturing the spirit of a succession of specific creative figures, usually writers, plus some artists and oth- ers. His inspiration lay partly in antiquity: the iconic Venue figures, perhaps goddesses, found in various archaeolog- ical sites in Europe, including the Laussel Venus , a lime- stone carving discovered in the Dordogne, which greatly impressed him. Rather than being individual portraits, as with the studies of writers, these works are free to deal with the more general notion of individual consciousness, in the form of the generative female being, embodied but also intangible and mysterious, extending through gener- ations with a kind of immortality. Born in Dublin in 1916, le Brocquy is one of the pre-em- inent Irish artists of the 20th century. A central figure in cultural life from the early 1940s, he is celebrated for his numerous, outstanding bodies of work in painting, the graphic arts and tapestry. His work features in numerous public and private collections, Irish and international. Aidan Dunne, February, 2024