Felim Egan

Felim Egan was born in Strabane, N. Ireland in 1952.

He is one of Ireland's foremost cotemporary artists and has a considerable reputation internationally. After completing his studies at the Slade School of Fine Art, London, Egan began exhibiting in the late 1970's. His canvases consist of monochromatic expanses of colour with sparingly deployed hieroglyphic motifs.

Egan has exhibited extensively abroad, participating in the 1980 Biennale de Paris, representing Ireland in the Biennale de Sao Paolo. He was awarded the Premier UNESCO Prize for the Arts in Paris in 1983, and in 1997 he received the Gold Award at Cagnes-sur-Mer.

Major exhibitions of Egan's work were held in 1995/6 at the Witworth Art Gallery, Manchester and in the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin. Other solo exhibitions have been held in Belfast, London, Edinburgh, Cologne, New York, Boston and Washington.

He has collaborated with A. R. Penck and the poet Seamus Heaney, who wrote the following on his work, "It is refined , but its refinement is equal to the world it registers…(his paintings) are quiet and await your pleasure. They call you out, they call you in. They are fuller than you realised."

Egan's one person show at the Stedelijk Museum, Amersterdam, in 1999 accelerated the already mounting momentum behind his work.

Large scale commissions include works for Dublin Castle and the National Gallery of Ireland.

Felim Egan's work is represented in numerous collections both public and private, including those of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Deutsche Bank, London; Frtiz-Winter-Haus, Moderne Kunst Museum, Ahlen, Germany; Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Credit Suisse First, Boston, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Trinity College, Dublin, Allied Irish Banks, Dublin, London, Brussels; An Comhairle Ealaion/The Arts Council and the European Parliament.