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Exhibition programme
As Láthair/Off Site
Irish Museum of Modern Art - IMMA
1. - 11.5. 2008
Participating artists include: Rebecca Horn, Pierre Huyghe, Ilya Kabakov, Joseph Kosuth, Brian O\'Doherty, Paula Rego
Nigel Rolfe, Tim RollinsAs Láthair/Off Site represents a further stage in the development of a long standing relationship between Féile na Bealtaine and IMMA’s National Programme. The partnership continues to highlight the importance of promoting dialogue between a national cultural institution and a regional arts initiative. Artists Kate Buckley, Andrew Duggan and Domhnal Ó Bric worked with pupils and teachers in the eleven gaeltacht national schools of Chorca Dhuibhne. The artists encouraged the pupils to draw on the experiences of visiting IMMA and facilitated a response to selected work from the IMMA Collection. The exhibition comprises some 22 works from IMMA’s Collection including artists such as Nigel Rolfe, Rebecca Horn, Louis le Brocquy and Tim Rollins. A short film will be shown documenting the project
(I’m Always Touched) By Your Presence, Dear - New Acquisitions
Irish Museum of Modern Art - IMMA
25.4.2007 - 17.3.2008
Participating artists include: Michael Craig-Martin, Dorothy Cross, Willie Doherty, Barry Flanagan, Pierre Huyghe, Philippe Parreno, Thomas Schütte, William Scott, Sean Scully.Le Corps et son double
Galerie Jeanne-Bucher, Paris
11.10. - 24.11.2007
Participating artists include: Jean Dubuffet, Max Ernst, Henri Laurens, Fernand Léger, André Masson, Joàn Miró, Pablo Picasso, Nicolas de Staël.
The exhibition "The body and its double" seeks to illustrate the many aspects of the body as it has been portrayed by ancient and contemporary artists alike. The richness of this juxtaposition of works from completely different periods and origins stems from the relationships between those periods and origins, brought to life by a kind of mysterious alchemy that goes beyond the rational or intellectual quality of the approach. It is more a question of instinct and the deepest consciousness of being, hence the sometimes striking comparison with works of primitive art.Selected display of correspondence between Francis Bacon and Louis le Brocquy
Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane
The Francis Bacon Studio
From 12 June 2007
Francis Bacon enjoyed a warm friendship with Louis le Brocquy and his wife, the artist Anne Madden and they corresponded regularly over the years. In 2000, fifteen surviving letters from Francis Bacon and copies of eleven letters from le Brocquy to Bacon from the early 1970's until Bacon's death in 1992, were donated to Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane by Louis le Brocquy and Anne Madden. Louis le Brocquy was recently bestowed the Freedom of the City of Dublin for his singular contribution to the visual arts and to mark this occasion and to celebrate both his and Anne Madden's friendship with Francis Bacon, a selected display of correspondence between these renowned artists is on show in the display cases of the Francis Bacon Studio.
Louis le Brocquy, the elder statesman of Irish art, is curently the subject of a number of celebratory exhibitions and events to mark his ninetieth birthday, not only in Ireland but also in Paris and London. The celebrations and accolades have been well-earned after more than seven decades during which this self-taught artist has come to be recognised both at home and internationally as the foremost Irish painter of the 20th century. 'Le Brocquy at 90', Leader, The Irish Times, November 4, 2006
Louis le Brocquy and his Masters. Early Heroes Later Homage
Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane
14 January - 30 March 2007
Dublin continues to honour Louis le Brocquy and his singular contribution to the visual arts in this his ninety first year, by bestowing on him the Freedom of the City. Curated by Pierre le Brocquy with the assistance of Jessica O'Donnell, Acting Head of Collections
Along with Jack B. Yeats, Louis le Brocquy is one of Ireland's most famous artists of the twentieth century. He has enjoyed a long friendship with the Hugh Lane and the first retrospective of his work was held here in 1966. The inalterable essence of human existence is to the core of his paintings and his oeuvre is a unique and unswerving inquiry into what is but not seen. His lifetime's work reveals a relentless pursuit of the human condition and the entrapment in paint of this singular imagery has brought him national and international critical acclaim from an early age, while he himself has become a renowned and beloved figure in contemporary Irish art. Early Heroes Later Homage has been organised in honour of le Brocquy's 90th birthday. The exhibition is divided into two pivotal periods: Early Heroes (1939-45) in gallery one explores the Masters from Japanese and Western European art who lit the initial spark and inspired the artist to become a painter. Later Homage (2005-2006) in gallery ten sees le Brocquy, now himself an artist of international renown acknowledge a life-long admiration for his artistic heroes: Manet, Velazquez, Goya and Cezanne. With the encouragement of his mother and with no formal training, Louis le Brocquy left Ireland in November 1938, to study major art collections in Europe. Travelling widely, he absorbed old master painting in London, Paris and Venice. He spent several weeks studying the Spanish masters in Geneva which then housed the Prado Collection during the Spanish Civil War. From this deep experience le Brocquy recalls his revelatory encounter with Velázquez's Las Meninas (1654; Museo Nacional del Prado): 'There in front of this huge work stood a small group of fellow visitors, partially obscuring the figures in the painting. Suddenly I perceived that the ephemeral actuality of the viewers was less real than the painted image before them. I believe at that moment I became a painter.' French 19th century, particularly masterpieces by Manet and Degas were of crucial importance for the young artist and echoes of these masters reverberate in his work. Not least among these formative influences was Beach Scene (Bains de Mer: Petite Fille peignee par sa Bonne) by Degas from the Hugh Lane Bequest. In the winter of 1940, following the outbreak of the Second World War, le Brocquy returned to Ireland from the South of France where he had had studios both at Cap Martin and at Menton. Despite the relative artistic isolation and his own youthful inexperience, le Brocquy's remarkable exploration of diverse modernist artistic styles, characteristic of an artist in the process of shaping his own artistic vision, drew immediate critical attention. The paintings reveal from the very start le Brocquys profound and enduring exploration of the classic theme of the figure. With the most recent paintings, Later Homage 2005-2006, shown for the first time in Ireland, le Brocquy revisits the masters who so inspired him. These remarkable and distinctive painterly variations on a theme are all prefaced by the term Looking At revealing le Brocquy's deep personal engagement with, and acknowledgement of, the significant influence these masters have had on his own artistic psyche. | Opening address
PreviewLouis le Brocquy: A celebration of the artist's ninetieth year
Crawford Art Gallery, Cork
9 January 2007 - 12 February 2007
Curated by Pierre le Brocquy
PreviewLouis le Brocquy. Homage to his Masters
Gimpel Fils, London
24 November 2006 - 13 January 2007
Louis le Brocquy is Ireland's most distinguished living artist. Born in Dublin in 1916, his career has spanned over seventy years, and he has become a dominant force in the evolution of Irish art. This exhibition comprises new work and demonstrates le Brocquy's continuing commitment to exploring the human figure through the medium of paint.
Throughout his career, Louis le Brocquy has experimented with the abstraction and dissolution of the figure, and the works included in this exhibition evince le Brocquy's continued investigation of the human form. Le Brocquy is perhaps best known for his Portrait Head series that he has worked on since the mid-1970s. Examining individual personality through fractured, interiorised portraits, le Brocquy painted artists and writers in an attempt to discover the true nature of their identity. These portraits were followed by Human Images explorative and meditative paintings in which the human form is dispersed into particle forms.
Homage to his Masters sees le Brocquy return to his early artistic influences, Velasquez, Goya, Manet and Cézanne. Le Brocquy visited Paris, London, Venice and Geneva, in 1938, and seeing works by these artists cemented his own desire to become a painter. Each of the paintings in this exhibition has its source in a masterpiece by one of his four artistic forbearers. Four Odalisques, dominate the show, each female nude echoing the compositional design of Manet's Olympia. These works are not intended as reproductions or copies, but rather, le Brocquy has used Manet's painting as a starting point for his own concerns. Shape, colour, and the dissolution of the human form become the primary subject matter.
In his 90th year, Louis le Brocquy has returned to his artistic beginnings and this look back to his early influences is particularly resonant for Gimpel Fils. This year the gallery celebrates its 60th Anniversary, and having exhibited le Brocquy's work in its inaugural year, the forthcoming exhibition also marks the 60th anniversary of our relationship with this exceptional artist | Press release
Preview | AnnouncementLouis le Brocquy, thirteen silkscreen editions
Fenton Gallery, Cork
10 November - 2 December 2006
The suite of prints, Human Image I-XIII, is the most recent manifestation of Louis le Brocquy's lifelong fascination with the human form. This enduring concern has been expressed in different ways over the course of his long career. In many paintings of the 1940s and early 1950s the human figure appears embedded within a rudimentary social or familial context that can never quite mask the underlying aloneness and existential alienation of the individual human being. From the mid-1960s on, in the works for which he is probably still best known, he has repeatedly focused on the human head as the physical chamber within which consciousness and creativity abide, and on the face as the principal site for the expression of unique personality. During the crucial period between the mid-1950s and the mid-1960s, however, and once again for much of the past two decades, le Brocquy has concentrated on the depiction of the isolated human figure apparently adrift in an alienating world that lies forever beyond full comprehension. These paintings, which the artist has lately come to refer to collectively as "Paintings of the Human Image", arguably constitute the most powerful and sustained exploration within his oeuvre of the nexus between consciousness and corporeality | Online catalogue
PreviewLouis le Brocquy. Marking the artist's ninetieth birthday
Tate Britain
6 - 22 November 2006Louis le Brocquy. Portrait Heads. A celebration of the artist's ninetieth year
National Gallery of Ireland
4 November 2006 - 14 January 2007
Curated by Pierre le Brocquy
As a contribution to the many events held this year celebrating Louis le Brocquy's ninetieth birthday, the National Gallery of Ireland presents an exhibition of fifteen portrait heads by the artist, which opens to the public from 4 November 2006 until 14 January 2006. Admission is free. The fifteen works on display have been selected by Pierre le Brocquy from private and public collections in Ireland and abroad. They feature images of well-known personalities, among them William Butler Yeats, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Francis Bacon, Federico Garcia Lorca and Picasso. Raymond Keaveney, Director of the National Gallery, says that Louis is perhaps best known for his unique series of compositions featuring celebrated literary figures and fellow artists. These images, which are a considered development of his Ancestral Head series are not, he says, "portraits in the conventional sense of the term but rather represent the artist's serial interpretation of their likeness, personality and humanity." The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated book, published by the National Gallery of Ireland, with essays by Irish author, Colm Tóbín and Dr. Síghle Bhreathnach Lynch, Curator of Irish Paintings in the Gallery, and a chronology of the head series compiled by Pierre le Brocquy. In his introductory essay, 'A Portrait of the Artist as an Alchemist', Colm Tóbín, says: "le Brocquy paints images of the head in the time when the face, in all its uneasy beauty and energy and singularity, outstares the skull and seems to contain within itself what le Brocquy calls 'the everlasting night of the stars' and what Yeats, in turn, called: 'All that man is, All mere complexities, The fury and the mire of human veins.'" Included in the display are three studies of Yeats (1975, 1976); two studies of Joyce (1977, 1978), and four of Beckett (1979, 1989 and 1994). Of his numerous studies of Yeats and Joyce, Louis has said: "I have sought to bring their spirits back from the place into which they have faded not exactly as an archaeologist searching for traces of them but more as an alchemist rebuilding 'those ancient glittering eyes." In her essay titled, "Behind the Billowing Curtain of the Face'': Louis le Brocquy's Portrait heads", Dr. Síghle Bhreathnach Lynch explores the artist's approach and methods of painting each of his subjects. On le Brocquy's studies of WB Yeats, she says: "It was as if he had unconsciously captured individual facets of the complex personality and character of Yeats, rather than producing a conclusive 'whole'. He now became aware that a true representation of a sitter cannot be seized in one permanent, stable image no matter how great the skill of the artist." The exhibition is not solely confined to images of literary figures but fellow painters as well such as Pablo Picasso, whose portrait was commissioned from the artist in 1983 by the Musée Picasso in Antibes, and a portrait of Francis Bacon who was the subject of a series of images painted by le Brocquy over a twenty-year period from 1979. 'Image of Bono' which was commissioned by the National Gallery of Ireland from the artist in 2003, will be on view in Room 23.
PreviewLouis le Brocquy. Rétrospective à l´occasion de son 90ème anniversaire
Radiance, vers cet état ultime de l'être...
Galerie Jeanne-Bucher, Paris
13 October - 10 November 2006
(Some works will also be available on the booth of the gallery at FIAC
Grand Palais, Booth A73, Paris, 25 - 30 October 2006La Galerie Jeanne-Bucher est heureuse de présenter une sélection d'oeuvres rares du peintre irlandais Louis le Brocquy, à l'occasion de son 90ème anniversaire.
Louis le Brocquy, né à Dublin en 1916, est considéré comme l'une des figures majeures de l'histoire de l'art irlandais du 20e sièce. L'oeuvre de Louis le Brocquy est dominée par la figure humaine, le corps humain, l'esprit humain - l'être humain et le continent de la conscience.
En présentant des oeuvres historiques rares de chacune des séries (Présences (1956-1966), Têtes ancestrales (1964-1974), Portraits (1975-2005), Images Humaines (1996-2005), notre exposition se propose de retracer, au sein de l'oeuvre de Louis le Brocquy, cette quête de l'essentiel, du visible et de l'invisible, en montrant également avec les dernières toiles comment la matière peut nous conduire à la limite de l'évanescence. Parallèlement à cette exposition, la galerie accueillera quelques sérigraphies récentes de la série des Images Humaines. Le catalogue de l'exposition sera mis en vente à partir du 12 octobre 2006
PreviewLouis le Brocquy. Allegory and Legend
Hunt Museum, Limerick
16 June - 18 September 2006
Curated by Pierre le Brocquy with the assistance of Virginia Teehan Director of the Hunt Museum.
To celebrate this event, the Hunt Museum is curating a major exhibition of his works entitled Allegory and Legend. Le Brocquy was born in Dublin and is considered Ireland’s most important living artist. His reflections on historical themes, mythical stories and folk rituals express deeply felt reactions to our past, through contemporary eyes.
Le Brocquy’s career spans 70 years of creative practice. He left Ireland in 1938 to study the major European art collections in London, Paris, Venice and Geneva. Rather than receive formal training, he preferred to learn by direct contact with the great artists of the past. In 1946 le Brocquy moved to London and became prominent in the contemporary art scene. He began to exhibit internationally and in 1956 he represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale, where his painting A Family won a major award. In 1958 the artist married Anne Madden and settled in Carros in the south of France.
Acknowledged by museum retrospectives worldwide, le Brocquy’s work is represented in numerous public collections, from The Guggenheim, New York, to The Tate, London. In Ireland, he is honoured as the first and only living painter to be included in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Ireland.
The paintings from the ‘Tinker’ series that feature in Allegory and Legend, have never before been assembled for an exhibition. In 1945 whilst in the midlands, near Tullamore, le Brocquy became interested in the travellers and developed concerns relating to their marginal lives.In le Brocquy’s words … most of all I was impressed by their insistence on freedom, freedom from every external regulation, observing only their own tribal rules and their tradition. Not perhaps altogether unlike the independence of the artist within society…
Le Brocquy’s tapestries give viewers a chance to see the artist’s exploration of mythical consciousness. In 1948 Edinburgh Tapestry Weavers invited le Brocquy and three other painters working in London, to design tapestries. His first tapestry continued his preoccupation with the travelling people. Travellers (1948) was exhibited originally by the Arts Council in London in 1950.
Among his many collaborations with Irish writers, le Brocquy is perhaps best known for his lithographic brush drawings for Thomas Kinsella’s renowned translation of the Táin in 1969. Táin means the gathering of people for a cattle raid and this tale forms the centerpiece of the cycle of Ulster heroic stories. The interplay between Kinsella’s text and le Brocquy’s images underlines the integral role of the illustrations. Le Brocquy explains that the illustrations form “an extension of the text”. Le Brocquy’s ink brush drawings are sympathetic with a literary text. They allow the reader to perceive both text and image without being distracted by the intrinsic, graphic qualities of the drawings.
Louis le Brocquy is recognised as Ireland's leading living artist speaking with a new voice, he has re-interpreted ancient forces with fresh vitality. In curating this exhibition, the Hunt Museum seeks to capture the artist's individual perspectives of the past. By bringing work of international significance to newer audiences in a regional location the Museum aims to provide access to a unique patrimony and complement the work of local partners - the Irish Chamber Orchestra, Daghda Dance Company, ev+a and RTÉ Lyric fm.
PreviewLouis le Brocquy: A celebration of the artist's ninetieth year
Irish Museum of Modern Art
9 May 2006 - 7 January 2007
Curated by Pierre le Brocquy
A display of seven major works by the distinguished Irish artist Louis le Brocquy, organised to mark his ninetieth year, opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 10 May 2006. Louis le Brocquy: A Celebration of the Artist’s Ninetieth Year presents a selection of seven emblematic works which were selected by Pierre le Brocquy. The works represent the artist’s Grey Period and also his Presence, Procession and Human Image series and together constitute an excellent distillation of his lifelong concerns and achievements as an artist. The display will be officially opened by the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, Mr John O’Donoghue, TD, at 6.30pm on Tuesday 9 May.
The display includes Riverrun, Procession with Lilies III, 1985, and Children in a Wood I, 1988, considered by the artist to be the most important works in his Procession series. Also included are two paintings from the 1950s dealing with the isolated standing human figure. In Lazarus, 1954, from the artist’s Grey Period, le Brocquy uses strong geometric planes and lines to frame the figure of Lazarus emerging from the tomb, with head bowed and arms raised, while Standing Figure, 1959, from the Presence series has an ambiguous almost abstract quality where the upright figure is suggested in a more subdued and muted palette. The artist’s most recent human image series is represented here by two paintings, both titled Being, from 2002. Image of Self, 1994, is also included in this celebratory exhibition.
PreviewLouis le Brocquy, thirteen silkscreen editions
Taylor Galleries, Dublin
30 March - 22 April 2006
Preview | Online catalogueLouis le Brocquy. Selected work from the Irish Museum of Modern Art Collection
Irish Museum of Modern Art
IMMA National Programme
Cill Rialaig Arts Centre, Ballinskelligs, Kerry
27 January - 28 February 2006