German artist to be celebrated at Galway Arts Festival

THE works of a recently deceased German artist who had close association with Galway will be exhibited at the Kenny Gallery as part of the Galway International Arts Festival.

Born in New York to German parents in 1940, Gertrude Degenhardt was raised in Berlin and first came to Ireland in the late 1970s while researching illustrations for a German-language edition of O’Flaherty’s short stories set on the Aran Islands. The visit marked the beginning of a long relationship with Galway, as she established a second home near Spiddal, and for almost 50 years she lived and worked between Germany and Ireland as a freelance artist before passing away in November of last year.

Music is a recurring presence throughout her work, particularly Irish traditional music, where movement, rhythm and gesture become central visual motifs. Across the decades she developed several major cycles that explored these themes in different ways. The Rondo series revealed an early mastery of movement and character through line.

In the Farewell to Connacht cycle, her engagement with the West of Ireland became more reflective. Among her most widely recognised bodies of work is the Women in Music series.

Degenhardt exhibited widely throughout Germany and Europe, while maintaining a particularly close association with Galway, where she showed work regularly over the years.

The exhibition on Gertrude Degenhardt and her work will run between Monday, July 13 and Tuesday, July 18 at the Kenny Gallery in Galway city.