Biography

Charles Brady HRHA (1926-1997) Still life and landscape painter. Born in Manhattan, New York, the son of Author Brady, industrial hardware merchant, of Irish extraction. He studied at the Art Student’s League in New York before coming to settle in Ireland in the 1950’s. “As long as I paint every day, something is bound to happen…” Charles Brady.
He is widely recognized as a painter of insignificant or banal objects, combining a thoroughly modern almost minimal aesthetic open painterly approach to his work. Brady’s style reminded some observers of the
Italian, Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964), of whom it was said: “ More than most contemporary artists he went his own way and worked in isolation from current movements.’
He was a lecturer in painting at the National College of Art and Design from 1976-83. He was elected HRHA in 1994.

In 1995, Seán Ó Mórdha produced a film documentary profile about him, "An American in Ireland". He had solo shows in his native New York: at the Urban (1955) and Babcock (1967) Galleries; in Dublin, his work was most frequently shown by the Taylor Galleries (1979-81, 1984, 1987-93, 1995); he has also had solo exhibitions at Davis Gallery, Dublin (1971) and Grant Fine Arts, Belfast (1994).
He participated in group shows at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1950); Babcock Gallery, New York, (1965), Penn. Academy, Philadelphia (1967), Two Artists with John Middleton (1975) and with Rosaleen Davey (1977) at the Caldwell Gallery, Belfast; Charles Campbell Gallery, San Francisco (1987-90) and Gateway to Art, Aer Rianta, Dublin Airport (1990).
He also exhibited regularly with Figurative Image, Irish Exhibition of Living Art, Oireachtas, and Royal Hibernian Academy. His work is held in many private and corporate collections in Ireland and the US. Among his many awards were the Douglas Hyde Gold Medal, Oireachtas (1973); PJ Carroll Award, Living Art Exhibition (1978); Landscape Award, Oireachtas (1975); and the Keating/McLoughlin Medal awarded by the ESB and RHA (1996).