Brian Fallon examines the career of Melanie le Brocquy, whose practice, while intimate in scale, eloquently captures the subtle dynamics of gesture and pose
Born in 1919, Melanie le Brocquy must by now rank as Ireland’s senior sculptor, with an exhibiting record that goes back to 1938 when she showed a single piece at the Annual RHA Exhibition. Nevertheless, for many years her public visibility was not high, if it has ever really been that. Her first solo exhibition came as late as 1986, at the Taylor Galleries in Dublin, and she did not achieve the landmark of a career retrospective (at the RHA Gallery) until 1999. This year, for the first time in years, she will have no work in the RHA. She was actually working on a sculpture — one of her small ‘family pieces’ she says — when she suffered two falls which put her temporarily out of action. Recovery has been steady and gradual
