Irish & International Art 25th April 2016 : Click Lot Title for More info & Pictures.

rish

& I

nternational

uction

onday

pril

2016

6.00

signed lower left, dated lower right & signed, titled & dated on reverse with artist’s archive no. 322

oil on board

61 x 91.5cm (24 x 36in)

Provenance:

Private Collection

Literature:

“Tony O’ Malley - Painter in Exile”, Arts Council of Ireland and

Northern Ireland, Dublin & Belfast, 1984, catalogue no.110

€20,000-30,000 (£15,625-23,438)

Tony O’Malley was born in Callan, County Kilkenny in 1913 and was a self-taught artist, having drawn and painted for pleasure

from childhood. He worked as a bank official until contracting tuberculosis in the 1940s. He began painting in earnest while conva-

lescing and, though he did at first return to bank work, he continued to paint and in 1951 began exhibiting his work. O’Malley first

visited St. Ives, Cornwall in 1955 then an important centre of abstract art before settling there in 1960. The simplicity and formal

mastery of O’Malley’s constructions reflect the modernist tradition of assemblage that stretches back to Pablo Picasso and to Kurt

Schwitters, an artist he admired. Some of his contemporaries in St Ives, like Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth and Peter Lanyon

were also drawn to the medium of collage and assemblage. Nature and history are recurrent themes within his works and for over 40

years he captured through abstraction the mood, atmosphere and movements of the Irish countryside and also the landscapes of more

exotic islands that he used to frequent. Drawing was the necessary root of all of O’Malley’s work and concisely knotted the mediums

together. A highly respected artist, his works are represented in all major Irish museums and included in the most significant public

and private collections of Irish art.