Stephen McKenna PRHA (1939-2017)
The Legacy
Oil on canvas, 150 x 213cm (59 x 83¾'')
Signed with initials and dated 1982

Provenance: Raab Galerie Collection, Berlin.

Exhibited: Museum of...

Stephen McKenna PRHA (1939-2017)
The Legacy
Oil on canvas, 150 x 213cm (59 x 83¾'')
Signed with initials and dated 1982

Provenance: Raab Galerie Collection, Berlin.

Exhibited: Museum of Modern Art Oxford, 1983 and at the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven, 1984.

 

One of the most significant representational painters to emerge in Europe in the latter part of the 20th century, Stephen McKenna was the son of a Scottish mother and a British Army officer from Co Tyrone. As a young child he witnessed devastated areas of post-war Europe - including London and Vienna - according to his father's postings. He studied art at the Slade, but was increasingly ill at ease with the abstract idiom then in the ascendant. As the 1960s progressed, his work moved more towards representation. An offer of a studio led him to Berlin in the early 1970s. Not only was his artistic approach more acceptable there, he felt in touch with the entire tradition of European painting, visiting many museums to study the paintings at first hand.

In the late 1970s, the international art world, including the art market, rediscovered figurative art, and McKenna found his work suddenly in great demand. He was also at a crossroads. He had become increasingly interested in the Germania-Italia divide in European culture, and he lived for a time in Brussels before moving to Italy. During this in-between period he made a number of works that seem to weigh up the arguments for the different, north-south approaches to life and culture, going through a veritable archive of the classical tradition.

 

The Legacy is an inherited, living tradition. Around this time, McKenna made several works relating to Homer's Odyssey, and the legacy includes an Homeric bust, a painted Etruscan vase, and the classical tradition in painting and sculpture. Natural abundance, including the glass of wine, suggests the southern reputation for luxuriant indulgence. Iconographically, apes symbolise vices, unfettered appetites, but also the arts of painting and sculpture, as in the phrase, "Ars simia Naturae" - "art is the ape of nature", a motif that gained currency especially in Flemish painting.

 

The artist's years in Italy, as he consolidated his work, were among his most productive and happiest, but Ireland was always important to him as well. His father retired to Co Donegal and McKenna often stayed there and painted. Eventually, he settled in Bagenalstown, on the Barrow, and that local landscape became integral to his work. He curated a major exhibition 'The Pursuit of Painting' at IMMA in 1997. He himself showed regularly with the Kerlin Gallery and was the subject of many survey and retrospective exhibitions including, most recently, A Painter's Life at VISUAL Carlow.

 

Aidan Dunne, 2019

 

 

 

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