Patrick Pye RHA

Patrick Pye was born in Winchester, England in 1929, but moved to Dublin soon after with his mother where he spent his life working as a sculptor, painter, etcher and stain glass artist. He trained under sculptor Oisin Kelly and attended the National College of Art in Dublin. In 1957 he received the Mainie Jellet Scholarship for painting which allowed him to travel widely throughout Europe. It was in Barcelona, through the influence of Romanesque Catalan art he witnessed in the National Museum, that his artistic direction became focused upon Christian iconography. Pye also studied under Albert Troost when training in stained glass artistry, going on to produce several windows for churches in Ireland and England. He was a founding member of Aosdána, the Independent Artist group and the Figurative Image exhibition, he also co-founded and edited art magazine Introspect.
His work was exhibited frequently with the Royal Hibernian Academy, of which he was elected a member in 1997, at the Irish Exhibition of Living Art, the Victor Waddington Gallery, Ritchie Hendricks Gallery and the Dawson Gallery. Brain McAvera published a book about the artist’s life and works and the RHA held a large retrospective in honour of him in 1997.