Paul Egestorff
Born in London of mixed German and Irish heritage, Paul Egestorff moved to Dublin in the 1930s, finding work there in an advertising agency. He attended night classes at the Metropolitan School of Art under the tuition of Maurice MacGonigal PRHA and Seán Keating RHA, and was soon having his work accepted in group exhibitions such as the RHA and the WCSI. Towards the end of the thirties he befriended Mainie Jellett. He became a pupil of hers and was one of only two of Jellett’s students who explored the possibilities of wholly abstract painting. www.whytes.ie From Jellett he learnt the principles of ‘translation’ and ‘rotation’ of form and space - methods which Jellett had in turn learnt from Albert Gleizes in company with Evie Hone. Inevitably, perhaps, Egestorff’s work came very close in appearance to Jellett’s own. He eventually abandoned this form of abstraction, looking instead towards the British surrealists for inspiration. In the catalogue to a retrospective of his work held at the European Modern Art gallery in Dublin, May 1990, Bruce Arnold wrote that despite the seeming diversity of Egerstorff’s multiple styles, his oeuvre represented “an integrated whole”, drawn together by “the exercise of a fine line, a controlled but cohesive palette and a rich, if haunted vision”. www.whytes.ie