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Press
Release - November 2006 LOUIS
LE BROCQUY: PORTRAIT HEADS |
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4 November 2006 - 14 January 2007 National
Gallery of Ireland. Admission free 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. 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. There will be series of talks in the Gallery later in the month in relation to the artist and his work, and the accompanying book to the exhibition will be on sale from the end of November in the Gallery Shop. LOUIS le BROCQUY:
PORTRAIT HEADS For further information
& images, contact: Louis le Brocquy: Portrait Heads Lecture Series November Sunday 26 Tuesday 28 December
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