Louis le Brocquy

Louis le Brocquy is today Ireland's most celebrated contemporary artist. Born In Dublin he studied chemistry and worked in his family's oil company before deciding to become a painter. He educated himself by copying from works in the great public collections of Europe and his earliest paintings pay homage to works by Whistler, Monet and Degas. Other formative early influences were Synthetic Cubism, contemporary London-based painters including Jankel Adler and Francis Bacon, the philosophical ideas of Erwin Schrodinger and 18th century Japanese genre, Ukiyo-e. By the early 1950she had developed his own unmistakable style and desolate families in stark surroundings. These were followed from the mid-fifties on by "Presences", images of single figures emerging from white backgrounds. In 1964 he was inspired by ancient artefacts to begin a series of "ancestral Heads" which in turn led to a series, which continues to preoccupy him today, of individual heads of writers and poets. In 1994 le Brocquy was awarded the title of Saoi of Aosdana, Ireland's highest award of merit for artists. He has also been awarded France's coveted Legion of Honour.