On the Town: All eyes were on the legendary sculptor Edward Delaney, who has lived in the west of Ireland since 1980. He was last to arrive for a retrospective of his work, Bronzes from the Sixties. He looked relaxed, sitting in the Gallagher Gallery upstairs in the Royal Hibernian Academy, listening to the tributes, a white rose pinned to his lapel and a blue cloth cap on his head.
"He's very much a character and a mould breaker," said Eamon Delaney, the artist's eldest son, who is a writer and the recently appointed editor of the current affairs magazine Magill. "He's focused and hard-working. He's lived the hard life, burning metal," he said.
Patrick Murphy, former chair of the Arts Council, whose book on the artist Patrick Tuohy, who committed suicide in 1930, was published recently by TownHouse Press, said Delaney was "brave and innovative for his time in the 1950s and 1960s. I remember when the Thomas Davis sculpture was unveiled. I thought it was terrific and I still do."
"He's one of the first sculptors who had a major impact in Ireland," said Prof John Turpin. "Sculpture before that had been representational."
Husband and wife Patricia and Harry Boylan, writers and friends of Delaney, were there also. Others present were Patrick T. Murphy, curator of the show and director of the RHA; Garech a Brún, of Claddagh Records; broadcaster Ciarán Mac Mathúna; artists Jackie Stanley and Campbell Bruce HRHA; art critic Ciaran Bennett; artist George Potter ARHA, Noelle Campbell Sharpe of the Arts Council and architect Noel Keating.
Delaney "took a lot of experimental chances. He was very brave," said fellow sculpture, Eamonn O'Doherty.