Jumping Jack I

Coloured Monotype

Irish

Private Collection : Purchased directly from the artist.

Basil Rakoczi Basil Rakoczi is acknowledged as the leading personality behind the White Stag Group. Born in 1908 to an Irish mother and a Hungarian father, Rakoczi spent his childhood in England and France. After studying at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere in Paris, he founded the Society for Creative Psycology in 1935 and it was here that he met Kenneth Hall. Rakoczi and Hall spent the late 1930's travelling in Europe until 1939 when they moved to Ireland to escape conscription. In 1940 the first White Stag Group exhibition was held at 34 Lower Baggot Street, Dublin. Irish Modernists such as Mainie Jellett were drawn into their orbit at this time. In 2005, Brian Fallon wrote of the White Stage that they ' infiltrated strongly into the cultural consciousness of the time ….. they attracted some passionate disciplines and there is not doubt at all that they attracted brought into war time Dublin a certain breath of creative novelty and liberation' (Irish Arts Review, Vol 22, no 2, The White Stags) The White Stag Group was honoured with a dedicated exhibition at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, July - October 2005. It consisted of approximately 65 paintings and drawings, from international museums and private collections. Artists represented included Basil Rakoczi. The White Stag Group centred around a number of British artists who based themselves in Ireland in the late 1930s and early '40s. The arrival of Basil Rakoczi and Kenneth Hall in Ireland at this time, created a new, youthful and dynamic focus of energy that had a profound effect on the debates and practices of art in Ireland. They brought with them the vitality of the Bloomsbury set, of which they were a part in the years preceding the War. They represented, and encouraged, a move from Academicism to Modernism, and their "Subjective Art" strongly influenced the work being made at the time by Irish artists such as Louis le Brocquy, May Guinness and Patrick Scott. The White Stag Group was not held together by an over-arching stylistic or formal basis, it was a social, geographic and intellectual collective. It embraced many disciplines such as the Society for Creative Psychology, which was led by Basil Rakoczi, and the work of the composer Brian Boydell who exhibited paintings with the group and also collaborated musically with some of its members.