CHRONOLOGY
* Denotes that a catalogue was published for this exhibition. Please see the Bibliography for details.
Anne Madden, Louis le Brocquy, 1974
1970
Embarks on a distinct group of paintings encompassing the interrelated Megalith/Elegy and Menhir series, which follow on from the Burren series. The works are infused with an emotional charge. Remarks that they are a ‘lament for my sister after her terrible death
in an air crash, as well as for the atrocities perpetrated in a riven Northern Ireland’.8
This series comprises large, atmospheric, often brooding compositions and saturated colour fields of dark blue, purple and red acrylic-based paint, poured layer upon layer onto unprimed canvas. Megaliths, the source of these paintings, are Stone Age monuments, generally understood to be burial sites.
Exhilarating visit to New York for the exhibition at Gimpel & Weitzenhoffer Gallery. Opening attended by Pierre Matisse, Pierre Schneider, James Johnson Sweeney, John Russell, Karel Appel, Peter Gimpel, Brian O’Doherty and Barbara Novak. A party is given for Anne by Lee Krasner, Jackson Pollock’s painter wife, renowned and revered for her support of younger artists, and attended by friends of hers and of Mark Rothko. The art world of New York is still in shock following Rothko’s suicide. Sees Mark Rothko’s last paintings at Marlborough Gallery.
solo exhibitions
Dawson Gallery, Dublin. The exhibition includes 14 Perspex serigraphs, executed in two-tone combinations of black, white and silver, in limited editions of 20 each, signed and numbered on the reverse.
Gimpel & Weitzenhoffer Gallery, New York. Exhibition of 14 serigraphs.
New Art Centre, London. Exhibition of 9 serigraphs, including Silver and Black (1969).
Oxford Gallery, Oxford. Exhibition of 14 serigraph prints.
group exhibitions
The Irish, Oxford Gallery, Oxford.
Manufactured Art, Camden Arts Centre, London.
Multiples, New Art Centre, London.
Taispeántas ealaíne An Oireachtas, Trinity College, Dublin.1971
Executes a mural of 300 x 1200 cm for University College Dublin. Later destroyed due to irreparable damage.
solo exhibition
The Richard Demarco Gallery, Edinburgh.
group exhibitions
The Irish Imagination, ROSC 1971: The Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin; Ulster Museum, Belfast.1972
solo exhibitions
Dawson Gallery, Dublin. In Hibernia, Dorothy Walker describes the large diptych and triptych Monolith paintings, which include Monolith III (1972), as ‘tough, strong works, the best painting Anne Madden has done up to now’.9
New Art Centre, London – paintings.
group exhibition
Biennale of Menton. Exhibition includes Monolith III (1972).
City Hall, Boston.
The 8th International Biennial Exhibition of Prints in Tokyo, Tokyo (travelling to Kyoto in 1973). Two serigraphic works included. Exhibition includes 149 artists, representing 46 countries, and 288 works.*1973
group exhibition
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC.1974
From this time onwards, the family spend yearly summer holidays in a cottage on the Beara peninsula, West County Cork.
solo exhibitions
Dawson Gallery, Dublin.
New Art Centre, London.
Ulster Museum, Belfast. A ten-year retrospective.
group exhibitions
Irish Directions, Ulster Museum, Belfast, and the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin, then travelling to the USA: Worcester Art Museum, Worcester (MA); Hampshire College, Amhurst (MA); The Hopkins Center, Dartmouth College, Hanover (NH); Albany Institute of History and Art, Albany (NY); Stonehill College, North Easton (MA); ICA Boston (MA); The Art Complex, Duxbury (MA); Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse (NY) and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca (NY), 1974–5.*1976
solo exhibitions
First exhibition held at the Galerie Darthea Speyer, Paris, under the auspices of the French Secrétariat d’État à la Culture. Exhibition includes Alignment (1975; purchased by the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris) and Pierres levées (Standing stones, 1974) is purchased by the French State.*
group exhibition
Bank of Ireland, Dublin.*1977
solo exhibition
Dawson Gallery, Dublin.*1978
Con Leventhal, Samuel Beckett’s professor at Trinity College, Dublin arranges a meeting between Anne, le Brocquy and Beckett at the PLM bar on the Boulevard Saint-Jacques, Paris. The trio develop a friendship that continues until Beckett’s death, 11 years later.
Purchase two adjoining Edwardian houses in Portobello, Dublin, which they knock together, with the guidance of their architect friend John Meagher.
solo exhibitions
Galerie Le Dessin, Paris.
New Art Centre, London.1979
solo exhibitions
The Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Belfast.
Galerie Darthea Speyer, Paris*. The private view is attended by many artists, including friend Francis Bacon. In an article for the
Irish Times (27 April), Ann Cremin states, ‘The involvement with light and form are primordial in understanding [her] work and are the very essence of her work.’ Dominique Fourcade writes the preface to the exhibition catalogue, ‘All here is self-contained and inexorably draws us in, caught up in a fugue toward light – a light to which we all aspire.’
Taylor Galleries, Dublin. The exhibition includes paintings, small drawings in pierre noir, graphite and oils.