Bronze Group (No. 2)

Artist Edward Delaney (1930 - 2009)

Datec.1968

MediumBronze

Dimensions93 × 20 × 15 cm

ClassificationsSculpture

Credit LineCollection & image © Hugh Lane Gallery. Donated by Maurice Fridberg, 1975. © The Estate of Edward Delaney.

Object number1369

DescriptionDelaney left school aged fourteen, but later attended the National College of Art, Dublin. From 1954-61 he studied sculpture in Munich and Rome, then worked in numerous foundries across Europe. He learned many professional secrets, intending to master the tradition of lost wax bronze casting; a technique where a wax model is encased in clay, heated, and molten bronze poured into the void left by the wax. Delaney became highly proficient in this technique, prized for its ability to retain the fine detailing of the original wax model.

The Bronze Groups, made at the peak of Delany's reputation, marry themes, which had long fascinated him; the standing, elongated human figure, also explored through the figure of Cuchulainn and the crucified Christ, and the family group. In these bronzes, however, the figures are rendered abstract; single entities, which can also be read as multiple figures. Delaney endows them with a delicacy and vulnerability, the elongated structures evoking a lightness that is at odds with the weight and bulk of their material. The smooth texture of the multiple heads references the soft wax of the original modelling, and Delaney succeeds in communicating a sense of the tenuousness and uncertainty of the human condition.

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