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Edward Delaney

1930 - 2009

Place of BirthClaremorris, County Mayo

BiographyEdward Delaney, born in Claremorris, Co. Mayo, is one of Ireland's best known sculptors. He studied at the National College of Art in Dublin (1951-1954), the Academie der Bildenden Kunst, Munich (1954-59) and the Accademia Della Arte Rosa, Rome (1959-1961). His abilities as a sculptor were recognised during his student years when he was awarded numerous prizes and scholarships including the West German Fellowship for Sculpture Prize in 1958, an Italian Government Scholarship for Sculpture in 1959 as well as several Arts council of Ireland awards. In the 1960s he established a reputation as one of the most progressive sculptors in Ireland. Working in bronze in an individual expressionist style, he produced figurative works with human, animal and Irish mythological subjects and themes. His most famous works of this period are his Memorial Statue and Fountain to Thomas Davis for College Green, commissioned by the Irish Government and erected in 1966 and his statue and Fountain to Wolfe Tone erected in St. Stephen's Green, unveiled in the following year.
His work in bronze is distinguished by the fact that he has always cast it himself in his own foundry. He was also the inspiration for setting up the Dublin Art Foundry. During the 1960s and 1970s Delaney maintained s summer studio in Carraroe near Connemara and in the 1980s he settled there permanently. A large body of his work is on public display at the Open Air Sculpture Park in Carraroe. With his change of environment came a major change in the direction of his art. Recent works have been carried out in stainless steel rather than bronze. These latest wall pieces and free standing works in cut and welded steel, reminiscent of trees, bushes, sea urchins and other organic forms, although very different in appearance from his earlier bronzes are, nonetheless, linked in that all are influenced by the artist's response to nature. In all his work an ability to use material, be it bronze or wire mesh, to suggest in abstract form the textures and shapes of the natural world is apparent. He has represented Ireland twice at the Paris Biennale in 1959 and 1961 and also in Tokyo, New York, Buenos Aires and Budapest. His work is included in many public collections and he has received commissions for public sculpture both in Ireland, and abroad. He is particularly well represented in New Your. Since 1982 he has been a member of Aosdána.
Edward Delaney died in 2009.