Robert Ballagh facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Robert Ballagh
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Ballagh in 2014
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| Born | 22 September 1943 Dublin, Ireland
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| Education | Bolton Street College of Technology |
| Known for | Painting, design |
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Notable work
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More than 70 Irish postage stamps, "Series C" Irish banknotes |
| Spouse(s) |
Elizabeth Carabini
(m. 1967; died 2011) |
| Awards | Aosdána membership |
Robert Ballagh (born 22 September 1943) is a famous Irish artist. He is known for his paintings and designs. Robert was born in Dublin, Ireland.
His early paintings were inspired by pop art. He is also famous for creating very realistic pictures of Irish writers and historical figures. Robert Ballagh designed over 70 Irish postage stamps and a series of banknotes. He also designed sets for plays and shows, including Riverdance.
Since 1967, Ballagh's art has been shown in many exhibitions. These shows took place in Dublin, Cork, Brussels, Moscow, and other cities. His work is kept in many museums and art galleries. In 1969, he was chosen to represent Ireland at the Biennale de Paris, a big art event.
Robert Ballagh has always lived in Dublin. He became a member of Aosdána, which is Ireland's academy for artists. He also helped start the Irish Visual Artists Rights Organisation. He has received several awards, including an honorary doctorate from UCD. He has also published a book of photos of Dublin and a book of his memories.
Contents
Early Life and Learning
Robert Ballagh grew up in Ballsbridge, Dublin. He was the only child of parents who both played sports for Ireland. His mother was Catholic, and his father became Catholic.
He went to St Michael's College and Blackrock College. During his school years, he became an atheist.
Robert Ballagh's Career
Before becoming a full-time artist, Robert Ballagh was a musician for about three years. He played bass guitar in bands like Concord and The Chessmen. He toured Ireland and England with The Chessmen. Even though he earned good money, he decided music wasn't for him. He sold his guitar to another musician, Phil Lynott, and stopped playing music.
Painting and Artworks
Ballagh worked as a draughtsman, postman, and designer in Dublin and London. He decided to return to Ireland and become an artist. He met an artist friend, Micheal Farrell, who asked him to help with a large mural. This big painting was for the National Bank in Dublin.
Around this time, Ireland's Arts Council bought one of his paintings. It was an acrylic painting of a razor blade. Robert was mostly self-taught. His early work was inspired by pop art. He created series of paintings called Package and Map. The Map series used bright paints and inkblots.
Later, he started painting about political topics. These included issues in Northern Ireland and the Civil Rights movement in the US. In 1972, he created an art piece to remember the victims of Bloody Sunday in Derry. It showed thirteen figures made of sand, sprinkled with blood.
He was chosen to represent Ireland at the 1969 Biennale de Paris. His art has been shown in solo exhibitions since then. He also designed abstract screens for a new restaurant at University College Dublin.
Ballagh began painting portraits in 1971. He painted many people looking at modern paintings. These works became very popular. For a supermarket in Clonmel, he painted a huge mural (about 80 feet long). It was made on 18 panels of formica. He included himself, his wife, and his daughter in this mural, called People and a Frank Stella.
He also painted scenes from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman for a local restaurant. Another series of six paintings was inspired by Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman.
Robert Ballagh has painted many famous people. These include artists like Louis le Brocquy, and writers like James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, and Samuel Beckett. He also painted the poet Francis Ledwidge and singer Bernadette Greevy. He even painted Fidel Castro. His painting of Francis Ledwidge is a triptych, which means it has three panels.
He painted James D Watson, a scientist, for the Genetics Institute of Trinity College Dublin. At Watson's request, Ballagh also painted Watson's colleague Francis Crick for a major institution in London. The Queen even commented on Crick's portrait, calling it "interesting." By 2010, Ballagh had painted 91 portraits of people outside his family.
He has also painted many self-portraits and pictures of his family. These include paintings of his family at their home and on holiday in Spain. He also used his family as models for general characters. For example, he painted two pictures of his daughter, Rachel, as a tribute to Marilyn Monroe.
After many years, Ballagh started painting landscapes seriously in the late 1990s. His 2002 exhibition, Tir is Teanga (Land and Language), showed 10 landscapes. These were not of specific places but showed typical Irish scenes. He also painted the Fastnet Lighthouse for the Commissioners of Irish Lights.
Ballagh has been a judge for art competitions. He has also led community art projects in Dublin and Belfast. He even taught art in prisons. One large mural project in Dublin was featured in a TV documentary.
His Studio
For many years, Ballagh had a studio on Parliament Street in Dublin. It overlooked City Hall. In the mid-1980s, he lost the lease and worked from home. In the early 1990s, he bought a house and a former piggery on Arbour Hill. He turned it into his studio and a small apartment.
Robert Ballagh sometimes works slowly and in great detail. For example, in 1982, he made only two paintings, spending about six months on each. His art has sold well at auctions. One painting, My Studio 1969, sold for 96,000 euro in 2004.
Postage Stamp and Banknote Design
Robert Ballagh has designed over 70 Irish postage stamps. He also designed a series of Irish banknotes, called "Series C". These were the last banknotes used in Ireland before the euro was introduced.
His first postage stamp design came out on 4 September 1973. It celebrated 100 years of the World Meteorological Organization. The stamp showed a weather map of northwestern Europe. His map of Ireland did not show the border with Northern Ireland. This caused some discussion, but no other international borders were shown either.
He designed stamps for many other events. These included 100 years of the Universal Postal Union, the first telephone call, and 50 years of Ireland's electricity company. He also designed stamps for Irish leaders, Scouting, and Irish festivals. One stamp design was rejected by the government after it was already printed. A version of it was released more than 15 years later.
In 1994, he was asked to design stamps for five Irish Nobel Prize winners. Four were released, but the fifth was cancelled. This was because the subject, physicist Ernest Walton, was still alive, and stamps are usually for people who have passed away.
Theatre Set and Other Design Work
Ballagh has designed sets for plays and shows both in Ireland and for international tours. The director of Dublin's Gate Theatre, Michael Colgan, first asked him to try this type of work.
He designed sets for Riverdance on its international tour and later in Dublin. He also designed sets for plays by Samuel Beckett and Oscar Wilde, such as Endgame and The Importance of Being Earnest. Other plays he worked on include Chekhov's Three Sisters and Hamlet.
For Riverdance, he created about 50 small images. These were then projected onto the stage to create backdrops. He had to change his designs to fit different venues around the world.
Ballagh also designed the opening ceremonies for two big sporting events in Ireland. These were the 2003 Special Olympics World Summer Games and the 2006 Ryder Cup. He also created a "living artwork" for an event, inspired by the famous painting The Girl with a Pearl Earring.
In other design work, he created a masthead for the Irish Examiner newspaper. He also designed a cover for a music single.
Exhibitions
Solo Exhibitions
Robert Ballagh has had many solo shows in Dublin, Brussels, Paris, Lund (Sweden), Warsaw, Moscow, and Sofia. His first exhibition was in 1969 in Dublin.
Later shows in Ireland included one in Cork in 1971. He also had exhibitions at his dealer's gallery in Dublin in the 1970s and 1980s. After his dealer passed away, Ballagh worked without a main gallery in Dublin for a while. His next exhibition of new work in Dublin was in 2009, called "Tir is Teanga" (Land and Language). This show featured paintings with natural materials like stones and sand.
In 1983, he had a "mid-term retrospective" show in Sweden. In 1989, he was invited to have a major show in Moscow, Russia. He was only the second Irish person to be invited to such a show there.
Ballagh had his first major retrospective show in Ireland in 1992. It was called Robert Ballagh – The Complete Works. The exhibition included 100 examples of his work. These were paintings, portraits, stamp designs, book illustrations, and theatre sets.
More retrospective shows followed. One of the most important was at the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin. There was also a display of his stamps at the General Post Office at the same time.
In 2013, an exhibition called Seven was held in Cork. It showed seven portraits of important political and cultural figures, and seven self-portraits. In 2016, some of his works related to the 1916 Easter Rising were shown.
Major Group Exhibitions
Ballagh's works were shown at the Irish Exhibition of Living Art (IELA) in 1967 and 1968. In 1969, he and other artists refused to send their works to Belfast due to violence. Instead, they were shown in an alternative exhibition in Dublin called Art and Conscience.
He was also invited to show his work at Rosc in 1980, a major international art exhibition in Ireland. In 1987, he participated in a peace forum and exhibition in the Soviet Union. At this event, he met famous people like Gregory Peck and Yoko Ono.
Ballagh's art has been shown in exhibitions in Florence and Tokyo. His work also toured the US from 1985 to 1987.
Awards and Leadership Roles
Robert Ballagh received the Carroll Prize at IELA in 1969. He also won the Alice Berger Hammerschlag Award in 1971.
He was a founding member of Aosdána, Ireland's national academy of artists, in 1981. He was also its first chairperson. He later resigned from Aosdána. He was also made a fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science. In 2013, he received an honorary doctorate from University College Dublin. In 2016, he received a Lord Mayor's Award in Dublin.
Two of his works won the Douglas Hyde Gold Medal at the Oireachtas Exhibition. One of his pieces, Northern Ireland, The 1,500th Victim (1976), was chosen as one of the "Modern Ireland in 100 Artworks."
Ballagh was the first chairperson of the Artists Association of Ireland. He also helped start the Irish Visual Artists Rights Organisation.
Art Collections
Robert Ballagh's paintings are held in several public art collections. These include the National Gallery of Ireland, the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin, and the Ulster Museum. His art is also in the Irish Museum of Modern Art and the Crawford Art Gallery in Cork. Other collections include Trinity College Dublin and museums in Switzerland and Germany.
Interests and Views
Robert Ballagh says his "political awakening" happened in 1968. This was when he heard about civil rights protestors being attacked in Derry, Northern Ireland. In 1988, he contributed to an arts festival in West Belfast.
In 1989, he helped start the Irish National Congress and led it for 10 years. In 1991, he helped organize the 75th anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising.
He is the president of the Ireland Institute for Historical and Cultural Studies. This group promotes international republicanism. It is based in Dublin at the birthplace of Pádraig Pearse.
Palestine Solidarity
In 2011, Ballagh disagreed with his colleagues from the Riverdance show. They decided to perform in Israel, but Ballagh is an active member of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign. This group encourages artists to boycott Israeli businesses and cultural events.
Concerns about Irish Galleries
In 2012, Ballagh expressed sadness about the closure of Irish galleries and museums. He mentioned that parts of the National Gallery and other museums were closed. He said that while arts funding might not seem important to everyone, it is vital for "the soul of the nation."
Publications and Appearances
In the 1980s, Ballagh published a book of photos of Dublin. The book showed less-known parts of the city. He also published an academic paper.
In 2018, he released his autobiographical volume, A Reluctant Memoir. This book shares his memories about important events in his life.
Documentaries have been made about Robert Ballagh by the BBC and Igloo Films. In 2019, he appeared on RTÉ's Celebrity Home of the Year, where his house came in second place.
Personal Life
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Robert Ballagh met his future wife, Betty Carabini, in 1965. She was 16, and he was playing a music gig. They had two children: Rachel, born in 1968, who also became an artist, and Robert Bruce, born in 1974 or 1975. When he was starting as an artist, Robert sometimes had to sign up for unemployment benefits. He has noted that income for artists can be uncertain.
The couple bought and combined several small houses into one large home, which they designed. This building, called Ballagh House, was featured in an architecture journal and on a TV show.
In 1986, Betty Ballagh had a serious brain injury from a fall. It took her years to recover fully. Robert's parents passed away in 1990. Betty died in 2011. Robert later received a settlement related to her care.
By the mid-2000s, he had two grandchildren. He had treatment for a type of leukaemia and recovered. He also received a diagnosis of type II diabetes. As of 2021, Robert Ballagh still lives in Broadstone and works from his studio in Arbour Hill.
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