IRISH ARTIST

 

IMOGEN STUART is a German-Irish sculptor. She is one of Ireland's best known sculptors with work in public and private collections throughout Europe and the U.S.

She was awarded the Mary McAuley medal in 2010 by President Mary McAleese, who paid tribute to her "genius", crafting "a canon of work that synthesizes our complex past, present images and possible futures...as an intrinsic part of the narrative of modern Irish art, of Ireland."

Born Imogen Werner in Berlin in 1927, she is the daughter of the art critic and author Bruno E. Werner. She grew up in wartime Berlin, where she took up drawing and sculpting at a young age, encouraged by her father who played an important role in providing a forum for Bauhaus artists through his cultural magazine die neue linie, and after the war as Cultural Attache for the Federal Republic of Germany in Washington DC. Imogen knew very little about her Jewish origins until after the war.

In 1945 Imogen began studying under Otto Hitzberger, who taught her modelling, carving, and relief work using different materials. She met her future husband, the Irishman Ian Stuart, grandson of Maud Gonne, who was also studying under Hitzberger, in 1948, and in 1949 the two moved to Ireland. They married in 1951 and took up residence in Laragh Castle nearGlendalough.  

Her works are  in wood, bronze, stone, steel, clay and terracotta and as the most prolific sculptor for both Roman Catholic and Church of Ireland churches her works are found across the country.

Her best-known sculptures include the monumental sculpture of Pope  St. John Paul II in St. Patrick's College, Maynooth and the carved altar in the Honan Chapel in Cork.

Her work, however,  extends well beyond the Church, including a commissioned bust of ex-President Mary Robinson which sits in the presidential residence in Dublin, the Flame Of Human Dignity at the Centre Culturel Irelandais, Paris.

 "Within the sharply defined limits of material, subject, space, size and money given, I learned to develop within myself a great freedom of expression. My life is full of gifts or minor miracles. I never intellectualize – the eyes and senses dictate my hands directly. Once the work has been completed a symbolism becomes so obviously and profoundly evident that I have to regard it as supernatural.” – Imogen Stuart (Notes On The Life Of A Sculptor, Milltown                                                                                                     Studies 22 (1988) 92–94.

The Sisters of Mercy commissioned three major pieces from her in 1958. Since then further pieces have been added to the College collection where 15 pieces of Imogen's artwork are on display.