Brian Maguire
Irish Expressionist Painter, Biography, Paintings.

Brian Maguire (b.1951)

The Irish expressionist painter Brian Maguire was born in County Wicklow. He studied drawing and painting at the Dun Laoghaire School of Art, and fine art at the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) in Dublin. A gifted student and artist, Maguire was appointed Professor of the Fine Art faculty at NCAD, in 2000.

Brian Maguire's expressionistic drawings and paintings (as well as his video, photography, and poster artworks) deal with themes of physical and political alienation. His focus on marginalized or disenfranchised groups has led him to work at a number of prisons, hospitals and other institutions in Ireland, Poland, and the USA, including: Mountjoy Jail, Dublin, Portaloise Jail, Spike Island, Co. Cork, Fort Mitchell Prison and Bayview Correction Center, New York. His recent paintings have also been inspired by American and world political events.

A former member of the Independent Artists Group, Maguire has exhibited extensively throughout Europe, America and Japan. He represented Ireland at the 1998 Sao Paulo Bienal, and created the "Casa de Cultura" series based on people from that city's slums. Maguire has also enjoyed a number of successful solo exhibitions, including Lincoln Gallery, Dublin (1981); Triskel Gallery, Cork (1982); Irish Pavilion, Leeuwarden, Netherlands (1990); Kerlin Gallery, Dublin (2001); Fenton Gallery, Cork (2003). In 2000, The Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin hosted a major retrospective for Maguire, which travelled to the Crawford Art Gallery in Cork and the Contemporary Art Museum of Houston, Texas. Maguire also won the Irish-American Cultural Institute's O'Malley Art Award in 1990.

Maguire's paintings and other artworks are represented in collections including: the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Hugh Lane Municipal Art Gallery in Dublin, University College Dublin, Office of Public Works (OPW), Crawford Municipal Gallery Cork, the Alvar Aalto Museum in Finland, and the Gemeentemuseum in the Hague, Netherlands.

More Information About Visual Arts in Ireland

• For details of other figurative painters from Ireland, see: Irish Artists: Paintings and Biographies.
• For more about expressionist painters like Brian Maguire, see: Irish Art Guide.
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