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I
rish
& I
nternational
A
rt
A
uction
M
onday
5
th
D
ecember
2016
at
6.00
pm
115
131 Brian Gormley (b.1959) American Target (2004)signed, titled & dated 2004 on reverse
acrylic & silkscreen on canvas
122 x 91.75cm (48 x 36in)
Provenance:
Hillsboro Fine Art, Dublin;
Nicholas Gallery, Belfast (label verso);
Private Collection
Exhibited:
Hillsboro Fine Art, Dublin 27th January - 15th February 2005:
New York Paintings Out of the Blue and Into the Black illustration no: 2
€3,000-4,000 (£2,608-3,478)
Brian Gormley was born in New York in 1959 of Irish ancestry. He is an internationally exhibited painter living and working in both
Ireland and Bucks County, Pennsylvania. His hybrid works are greatly influenced by the abstract expressionist and graffiti art move-
ments. He came of age artistically during the New York City art boom years of the nineteen eighties when both neo-expressionism
and street art raged. Gormley has been described as an heir to abstract expressionism seeing an influence of Jackson Pollock in his
more modestly scaled work. His exhibition at Hillsboro Fine Art was a striking collection of colourful large areas with black over
painting that were at once free and exuberant, and yet containing a felling of underlying bleakness communicated by the predomi-
nant black that may hint at the calamity that befell New York City on 11th September 2001. His favourite media are acrylic and
silkscreen techniques on linen or canvas and he admits to an admiration for the paintings of the late Jean-Michel Basquiat, whom he
knew personally and who also made use of street graffiti signs in his compositions.