Mary Swanzy HRHA (1882-1978)
Cubist Landscape, Trees, Houses
Oil on canvas, 34 x 47.5cm (13¼ x 18½'')

Provenance: With Pyms Gallery, London, label verso; With Peppercanister Gallery, Dublin, from...

Mary Swanzy HRHA (1882-1978)
Cubist Landscape, Trees, Houses
Oil on canvas, 34 x 47.5cm (13¼ x 18½'')

Provenance: With Pyms Gallery, London, label verso; With Peppercanister Gallery, Dublin, from where purchased by the current owner.

 

Mary Swanzy 1882-1978 was introduced to Picasso's early cubist paintings in 1906 in Paris at Gertrude Stein's home. She was one of the first Irish painters to investigate the new way of seeing, not for her the school of André Lhote or Albert Gleizes, the masters who informed the important work of subsequent Irish cubists Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone.

In the 1920s she regarded herself primarily as a landscape painter and here in Cubist landscape, trees, houses we see her unique interpretation of the major modernist trend. Her use of dynamic, elliptical shapes alongside diagonals creates an energy and movement in this painting reminiscent of Italian Futurist paintings of a similar period.

Swanzy's facility for beautifully balancing colour with form creates a distinct tension. While her continued use of perspective, against the laws of cubism, creates a sense of depth, despite the flattened picture plane. As with so many of her cubist paintings Swanzy's love of mathematics especially the geometry of her native Georgian city is very much in evidence.

Liz Cullinane, 2021

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