Brian Maguire

Brian Maguire is an Irish contemporary artist whose painting practice is motivated by the fight against inequality and violence, as well as the pursuit of justice.

Biography of Brian Maguire

Brian Maguire was born in 1951 in Dublin, Ireland. He studied at Dun Laoghaire School of Art and the National College of Art and Design.

In 1998, he presented Ireland at the São Paolo Biennale. In 2000, Maguire was appointed Professor of the Fine Art Faculty of the National College of Art and Design. He also is an elected member of Aosdána - an Irish association or academy of artists.

Maguire has exhibited extensively in both Europe and the US and has also taken part in shows in Korea, China, and Japan. His solo exhibitions include "Brian Maguire" at the Douglas Hyde Gallery in Dublin (1988); "Body-Politic" at the Kerlin Gallery in Dublin (1996); "Vila Prudente" at the Ram Gallery in Rotterdam (2002); "Seed Corn is Not For Harvesting and Other Works" at X Espacio de Arte in Mexico City (2013); "War Changes Its Address" at the United Nations Headquarters in New York (2020); "An Anatomy of Politics" at Galerie Christophe Gaillard in Paris (2021); "In The Light Of Conscience" at the Missoula Art Museum in Montana (2022), and many others.

He has also participated in various group exhibitions, including "11 European Painters" at the National Gallery in Athens (1985); "Panorama Europeo del Videoarte" at the Association of Ideas in Madrid (1992); "Irish Art" at Gallerie Monch in Berlin (1995); "A Century of Modern Painting" at the Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art in Japan (1997); "Race-Face" at the National Gallery of Contemporary Art in Korea (2002); "Return to Sender" at Wiels in Brussels (2014); "Naked Truth" at the Crawford Art Gallery in Cork (2018); "Ghosts from the Recent Past" at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Ireland, among others.

In 2018, Kerlin Gallery and Fergus McCaffrey published the Brian Maguire monograph, a comprehensive publication that showcases over 30 years of his work. 

Currently, the artist lives and works in Dublin (Ireland) and Paris (France). 

Brian Maguire's Art Style

Brian Maguire's painting practice is motivated by the fight against inequality and violence, as well as the pursuit of justice. He embraces painting as an emblem of solidarity, endeavoring to restore humanity to his subjects and recentring the stories of the disenfranchised. Social involvement assumes a pivotal role in his creative process, propelling him to collaborate closely and interactively with refugees, war survivors, incarcerated individuals, and local newsrooms in diverse locations like Sudan, Syria, São Paulo, and Ciudad Juárez.

The artist firsthand observed the conflict zones, and this places his work in proximity to war reporting or photojournalism. Although his artworks may originate from the act of bearing witness, his true mission in the studio is to metamorphose his testimony into intensely compelling and impactful masterpieces of art.

A palpable tension emerges from the convergence of Maguire's raw and visceral subject matter with the captivating and illusory essence of the painting itself. Instead of forsaking aestheticism, Maguire skillfully wields the painter's artistry, manipulating surfaces and textures to lure us into an uncomfortable relationship where ethical insight merges with poetic imagination. Through this fusion, he repositions art within the tangible social structures from which it is often removed.