Edward Delaney (1930–2009) was an Irish sculptor born in Claremorris in County Mayo in 1930. 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 1970s.
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Edward Delaney attended the National College of Art and Design in Dublin and, supported by the Irish Arts Council, studied casting in Germany. He represented Ireland at the Biennale de Paris in 1959 and 1961.[1]
He represented Ireland at the Paris Biennale (1959 and 1961) and at the World Fair in New York (1965). He has also shown in New York, Tokyo, Buenos Aires, and Budapest. At home, he exhibited in the Hendriks, Royal Hibernian Academy, Davis and Solomon Galleries, and in the Project Arts Centre, amongst others.
Some of his awards and scholarships include: a West German fellowship for sculpture (1956-7); Bavarian State Foreign Students Sculpture Prize (1958); Italian Government Scholarship for sculpture (1959–60); the Arts Council of Ireland Sculpture prizes (1962 and 1964); and the Royal Hibernian Academy Award for Sculpture of Distinction in Bronze (1991).[1]
Delaney married Nancy O'Brien in 1961. He has five children by her. When his marriage broke up, around 1980, he moved to Galway. There he met Dr Anne Gillen, by whom he has two children.[2] He was a member of Aosdána.[1]
He died on 22 September 2009, at the age of 79.[1]
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. However, arts writer Judith Hill points out that these statues make no attempt at an exact likeness of the figures they portray, instead, they communicate the public stature of their subjects and, indeed, the public role of memorial statues through their proportions and scale.[3] In this way, it is argued, they mark the transition from memorial and public art.
What all Edward Delaney's work shares is robustness, in an Irish Times review of his 2004 retrospective,arts writer Aidan Dunne described his bronzes as robust, but having an awkwardness, a tenderness about them.[4]
From 1980 onwards, Edward Delaney concentrated on large scale environmental pieces and stainless steel works in Carraroe, County Galway. The Royal Hibernian Academy held a retrospectives of his work in 1992 and again in 2004.
His has been collected by the in Dublin. Works are in many major collections, including the Central Bank of Ireland, Dublin; Bank of Ireland; Allied Irish Banks; Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin; Ulster Museum, Belfast; Waterford Museum; Office of Public Works, Dublin; First National Bank of Chicago; First National City Bank of New York; An Chomhairle Ealaíon/The Irish Arts Council; KLM Airlines Headquarters, New York; Irish Management Institute, Dublin; Jefferson Smurfit Group Ltd.; Norman B.Arnoff, New York; University College, Dublin,[5] and the Abbey Theatre, Dublin.
A large body of Delaney's work can be seen at the Open Air Sculpture Park in Carraroe in the west of Ireland.[1]