Visual Arts
Edward Delaney
Born in Claremorris, Co. Mayo in 1930, Edward Delaney studied at the National College of Art & Design in Dublin, and then travelled to Munich, Bonn and Rome after being awarded fellowships and scholarships by the West German and Italian governments.
He represented Ireland at the Paris Biennale in 1959 and 1961, and has shown sculptures in Tokyo, Buenos Aires and Budapest. His public commissions for the Irish government include a famine memorial and a statue of Wolfe Tone on St. Stephen’s Green in Dublin, both from 1967, and a statue and memorial to Thomas Davis on College Green. He created a cross and figure of Christ crucified, as well as bronze plates decorating the baptismal font, for St. Michael the Archangel church in Ballinasloe, Co. Galway.
His sculptures are held in public collections including the Central Bank of Ireland, Bank of Ireland, Allied Irish Banks, Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery in Dublin, Office of Public Works in Dublin, First National City Bank of New York, KLM Airlines Headquarters in New York, Irish Management Institute, Jefferson Smurfit Group, and the Abbey Theatre. The open-air sculpture park in Carraroe, Co. Galway features a large body of his work. The Royal Hibernian Academy’s Gallagher Gallery held a retrospective of his work in 1992.
He won the Arts Council prize for sculpture (1962) and its scholarship for sculpture and bronze casting (1964), and the RHA Award for Sculpture of Distinction in Bronze (1991).