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Inspired by her experience in France, Jellett began to analyse rhythm, colour and form in her own work, while also drawing on long-standing pictorial traditions. When shown with a similarly abstract painting at the Society of Dublin Painters group show in 1923, Decoration caused a furore. The reviewer from The Irish Times wrote of Jellett’s work in the exhibition:‘they are all squares, cubes, odd shapes and clashing colours. They may, to the man who understands the most up-to-date modern art, mean something; but to me they presented an insoluble puzzle.’ A more strident journalist referred to the ‘sub-human art of Miss Jellett’. The artist drew similar criticism from Irish painters suspicious of Modernism. Through perseverance and a return to more figurative motifs, however, she changed the view of many of her critics.
Though Decoration is essentially abstract and bears a deliberately generic title, its pentagonal format, colour range and media strongly recall religious icons depicting the Madonna and Child.
March 2016
Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone, joint exhibition, Dublin Painters Gallery, Dublin, 1924
Mainie Jellett, 1897-1944, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, 7 December 1991 - 22 March 1992
Analysing Cubism, Irish Museum of Modern Art, 19 February - 19 May 2013; Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, 20 June - 1 September 2013; F.E. McWilliam Gallery and Studio, Banbridge, 13 September - 30 November 2013