Breon O'Casey (1928-2011) was the son of the Irish playright, Sean O'Casey, and a significant member of the St Ives school, whose leading figures included Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson and Bernard Leach. He began his working career as an assistant, initially to Denis Mitchell and later to Dame Barbara Hepworth in St. Ives, whilst establishing himself up as a painter, jeweller, weaver, and later, as a sculptor.
Drawing on multiple influences from antiquity to Modernism, primitive and non-western art, O'Casey is celebrated for his creative exploration of two and three dimensional mediums and the development of a rich personal style with its unique visual language that oscillated between the figurative and the abstract. When asked about objects that captivated him, O’Casey said it was ‘not the wood, not the tree, but the leaf; not the distant view, but the hedge; not the mountain, but the stone’.
Drawing on multiple influences from antiquity to Modernism, primitive and non-western art, O'Casey is celebrated for his creative exploration of two and three dimensional mediums and the development of a rich personal style with its unique visual language that oscillated between the figurative and the abstract. When asked about objects that captivated him, O’Casey said it was ‘not the wood, not the tree, but the leaf; not the distant view, but the hedge; not the mountain, but the stone’. His work is founded on a series of repetitive, often geometric motifs (often arranged in rows of three, a number he found intriguing and magical – a shorthand for infinity) which he would return to throughout his career; from simple, bold images of birds and hills reminiscent of Georges Braque and Henri Matisse, to his use of colourful triangles, spirals and polka dots in constructing landscapes rich in poetry and emotion. It was the 1945 exhibition of Paintings of Picasso and Matisse held at the V & A Museum, London organised by L’Association Française d’Action Artistique and The British Council which O’Casey described as ‘one of the epiphanies of his life’.. ‘God blimey’, I thought..this really is it.This is the cat’s whiskers alright. And that left an enormous impression on me that show.”
His work is founded on a series of repetitive, often geometric motifs (often arranged in rows of three, a number he found intriguing and magical – a shorthand for infinity) which he would return to throughout his career; from simple, bold images of birds and hills reminiscent of Georges Braque and Henri Matisse, to his use of colourful triangles, spirals and polka dots in constructing landscapes rich in poetry and emotion.
