Gerda Frömel

Born in Czechoslovakia to an Austrian mother and German father in 1931, Gerda Frömel enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts, Stuttgart at the age of 17. She then continued her studies in Darmstadt and Munich, specialising in metalwork and sculpture. During this period, she met the sculptor Werner Schürmann, whom she married in 1955.

In 1956, following the birth of their first child, the couple moved to Ireland, where Schürman had been offered a post at the National College of Art and Design. Frömel exhibited for the first time at the Irish Exhibition of Living Art in 1957, and continued to do so regularly up to the year of her death. She also showed her sculpture at the Dawson Gallery (alongside the work of Michael Scott), at the Oireachtas Art Exhibition (1970), and elsewhere. As well as sculpture, Frömel worked in stained glass, designing windows for churches in both Ireland and Germany.

Though Frömel had been represented in group shows, the major retrospective dedicated to her at IMMA and the F.E. McWilliam Museum & Studios in 2015 was the first showcase of her work since a monographic exhibition at the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art in 1976.