“Lithography is an extension of my painting,’ — John Breakey explains to Brian McAvera”
Although John Breakey (b. 1932) has been making art for as long as he can remember and although he has always sold steadily, you will not find him — or many others that I can think of — in any of the art histories of the past fifty years. He doesn’t fit into fashionable trends; he lives in the country, and for a long time he exhibited only in group exhibitions (Fig 1). Add to that the fact that he has spent over a decade out of the country, and that much of his work is bought by universities and private collectors in England, Ireland and Canada, and you realise why he is one of the unsung petit maitres of Irish art. For much of his life he divided his time between lithography and painting, although he started off making constructive art after he left the Slade
