Born in London of Irish and Anglo-Chilean parents, Anne Madden spent her early years in Chile before her parents returned to London and Co Clare. She subsequently attended the Chelsea School of Art where she became influenced by Abstract Expressionism and the work of Sam Francis and Jean-Paul Riopelle. In the 1960s Madden embarked on a major series of mainly abstract paintings inspired by the landscape of the Burren in Co Clare, a landscape which had profoundly influenced her from an early age: ‘I spent much time during my adolescence roaming the roads and clambering across fields of rock ... and I responded strongly to the loneliness, the light and the darkness of this strange landscape, and it became part of me. I have never again experienced such a direct and profound relationship to place.´

In the 1960 painting, Burren Land, we can see Riopelle´s influence on her work. She adopted a palette-knife technique to represent the limestone formations. In the slightly later painting, Land Formation, Burren (1967), Madden uses multiple canvases as a means of creating pictorial interactions, and like in Burren Land she creates a space for potential, a space of possibility where the viewer can contemplate and even complete the narrative.

Following her marriage to Louis le Brocquy, she moved to Carros in the south of France. (She is author of Louis Le Brocquy – Seeing his Way [1994]). In 1965 she represented Ireland at the Paris Biennial, and has exhibited worldwide. Her work is represented in numerous Irish and international collections. She was elected a member of Aosdána in 1986, and lives and works in Dublin.


— JOB