50
35. Nano Reid (1900 - 1981)
Island Dwellers
Oil on canvas, 35 x 52.5cm
Signed
Together with Nano Reid, McGuinness represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale in 1950,
a considerable honour for any artist as it was the first Biennale at which Ireland had an entry,
but especially mentionable for two female modern artists to be given such a platform on the
world stage, shaping their nation’s cultural identity. Each artist showed 12 works and in Italy
at least, the response was positive – the Italian President even bought McGuinness’s painting
The Black Church
24
. Her exhibiting partner Nano Reid was an independent Modernist who
prided herself on her individualism and favoured the Expressionist painting of Soutine and
the Argentinian Berni, rather than the Cubism of her Irish contemporaries while studying in
Paris. The fact that Reid was a female artist did not escape mention in the 1950s, with James
White writing in the Biennale catalogue that critics “were amazed to learn that Reid was a
woman artist” because of her strongly Expressionist style
25
. Along with Noreen Rice, she was
closely associated with Gerard Dillon but resented being called an abstract artist: “I don’t like
pure abstraction, just as I don’t like pure representation”
26
.
24
J. Duignam,
biennale-1950 [accessed 29th April 2014]
25
ibid
26
Artist and Loan Wolf: The Artist Talks to Marion Fitzgerald. In: The Irish Times (14 April 1969)
Cont. p56
