One of Ireland’s best known artists, Louis le Brocquy was born in Dublin in 1916. A self-taught painter, le Brocquy has always been preoccupied with capturing an aspect of the body as an image of the human being. Since 1974 he has been concerned with the Celtic concept of the human head, and is probably best known for his long series of studies in various media of writers’ heads such as those of Beckett, Yeats, Joyce and Lorca. The exhibition put this more recent work in the context of his earlier paintings, amplifying the artist’s total practice.

This exhibition comprised more than 90 paintings – including early works, group portraits, head studies, procession series and human presences – which surveyed le Brocquy’s extraordinary oevre up to date.