27 / 114
27
The Ib Jorgensen Collection 11
th
November 2014
21
Tony O’Malley HRHA (1913-2003)
Inscape, Ireland 1963
Oil over watercolour on paper, 43 x 55cm (16.9 x 21.6”)
Signed, inscribed and dated 1963
Born in Callan, County Kilkenny, Tony O’Malley was a self-taught artist, having drawn
and painted for pleasure from childhood. In 1955 O’Malley holidayed in St Ives, Corn-
wall, then an important centre of abstract art, and home to the artists Peter Lanyon,
Patrick Heron, and Bryan Wynter, with whom he worked. In an interview he speaks of
his attitude to abstraction: ‘Not so much abstract as essence. I could not paint for the
sake of the pigment of whatever, but I like abstract form in the painting which instills
it with meaning and power. Abstraction does enable you to get under the surface, to get
beyond appearance, and to express the mind. But abstraction for its own sake does not
interest me.’
€2,000 - 3,000