Edward Delaney

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. 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 (1956–57); the Bavarian State Foreign Students Sculpture Prize (1958); the 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). Delaney married Nancy O'Brien in 1961 with whom he had five children. When his marriage broke up, around 1980, he moved to Galway. There he met Dr Anne Gillen, by whom he had two children. He was a member of Aosdána. He died on 22 September 2009, at the age of 79. His firstborn, Eamon Delaney unveiled a sculpted monument in his honour in 2013. His daughter, Catherine Delaney, is also an artist and a member of Aosdána.

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. 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. 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 retrospective of his work in 1992 and again in 2004.