merrion street

Jimmy Deenihan, T.D., Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, today (Wednesday 25th April, 2012) extended his sympathies to Ann Madden Le Brocquy, and sons Pierre and Alexis, on the death of the great Irish artist Louis Le Brocquy.

“Louis”, the Minister said, “was the first truly internationally successful Irish modernist. His work has received due international attention and many accolades in a career that spanned a remarkable seven decades of creative practice. His widely acclaimed heads of literary figures and fellow artists, including W.B. Yeats, James Joyce and his friends Samuel Beckett, Francis Bacon, Seamus Heaney and Bono, will forever lend indelibility to his legacy and durability to his unique signature.”

Le Brocquy's work is represented in the collections of numerous museums in the USA, the UK, France, Switzerland, Italy, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Brazil, Japan, India, Korea, New Zealand and, of course, Ireland. “That the Guggenheim in New York, the Columbus Museum in Ohio and the Picasso Museum in Antibes have holdings of his seminal works attests to the genius and craft of this wonderful artist. There always was a daring in the subtlety with which he addressed his subjects over a blessedly long creative career, and this was recognised throughout the art world”, the Minister said.

Highlights of his career include representing Ireland at the Venice Biennale in 1956, and exhibitions at the Musée d’Art Moderne the la Ville de Paris (1976), the New York State Museum (1981), the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne (1988) and the Irish Museum of Modern Art (1996) and the Hunt Museum in 2006.