Edward Delaney is an Irishsculptor born in Claremorris in County Mayo in 1930. He attended the National College of Art and Design in Dublin and, supported by the Arts Council, studied casting in Germany. He represented Ireland at the Paris Biennale in 1959 and 1961. His best known works include the 1967 statue of Wolfe Tone and famine memorial at the northeastern corner of St Stephen's Green in Dublin and the statue of Thomas Davis in College Green, opposite Trinity College Dublin. These are both examples of lost-wax bronze castings, his main technique during the 1960s and early 70s. Though they do exhibit some of his trademark expressionism, the statues of Wolfe Tone and Thomas Davis are less abstract than was most of his work at the time; the famine memorial is more typical in this regard. What all his work shares is robustness, in an Irish Times review of his 2004 retrospective Aidan Dunne described his bronzes as robust, but having an awkwardness, a tenderness about them.
Since 1980 Edward Delaney has concentrated on large scale environmental pieces and works in Carraroe in the west of Ireland.
The statue of Wolfe Tone was blown up by loyalist terrorist in 1979. The head survived undamaged and the statue was reconstructed.The Royal Hibernian Academy held a retrospectives of his work in 1992 and again in 2004. He has been collected by the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin. He is a member of Aosdána.
External links
Aosdána short biography (http://www.artscouncil.ie/aosdana/biogs/visualarts/edward_delaney.html)
Reference
Aiden Dunne, Casting new light on old bronze, Irish Times 11 December 2004.
EdwardDelaney is one of the most celebrated Irish sculptures of the second half of the twentieth century.
Delaney is best known today for the two major monuments in Dublin, the Wolf Tone Memorial, 1967, on the North East corner of St. Stephens Green and the Thomas Davis Memorial 1966, on the median opposite Trinity College.
Delaney brought much of these qualities into his studio work and this exhibition uses a concentrated selection of his bronzes from the sixties to aid a review of his oeuvre.
Bronzes from the 60s, an exhibition of the works of EdwardDelaney takes place in the RHA from the 8th of December to the 9th of January.
Working in bronze in the lost wax method Delaney's figures attempt a seamless union of form, material and content.When he returned to Dublin, Delaney's brand of European modernism was without context in 1960's Ireland.
Delaney brought much of these qualities into his studio work and this exhibition uses a concentrated selection of his bronzes from the sixties to aid a review of his style.
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