Gerda Fromel Toward the Language of Abstraction

Valerie Abbey
Trinity College Dublin
Department of History of Art and Architecture
2020
BA

Subject: Sculpture
Country: Czechoslovakia, Ireland
Period: 20th Century

10,000 words

This thesis posits the argument that Gerda Fromel was a sculptor working in Ireland at a time interest in modern abstract sculpture was growing in the country. It looks at her life and works through a phenomenological and a psychological lens. She emerges as a modernist, rooted in a European artistic sensibility with the ability to assimilate and intuit influences. This combined with her fastidious craftsmanship and creative eminence makes her an artist of Irish and European signifiance.As she moves into abstraction, noted are the infuences, Morris Graves, Giacometti, Brancusi and Barbara Hepworth. She was part of a dynamic artistic milieu in Ireland and counted as friends many significant artists and it can be exrapolated from this that discussion of influences were inevitable. Male and Female criticism of Fromel’s work is also discussed.

Irish Georgian Society

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Gerda Fromel Toward the Language of Abstraction