This is a set of 5 prints of Irish writers by Jim Fitzpatrick
Jim FitzPatrick is a world renowned artist. Best know for the world famous Viva Ché 1968 poster (yes the Ché Guevara image you know well), Thin Lizzy album covers and a lifetime of iconic Celtic Irish art.
SAMUEL BECKETT by Jim FitzPatrick
I love Beckett’s attitude to literature and his crabby personality that belied his deep inner reflective nature. He once went out with James Joyce’s beautiful daughter, the misunderstood Lucia. I went out with her very beautiful grand-niece too who is still a good friend of mine…so there ya go. He did write to me once too when I asked him for an ok to do a poster of him:
‘Please wait till I’m quite dead’.
The result is this poster from 1973.. eh.. published while he was quite alive.
JAMES JOYCE by Jim FitzPatrick
I’m an an absolute Joyce fanatic. I love his writing, I love the mad, eccentric ‘Finnegan’s Wake’ and of course ‘Ulysses’ and I even have a first edition of ‘Pomes Penyeach’.
I grew up with the Joyce legend as he lived near my family in Drumcondra, Dublin, up near the library on Millmount Avenue. Ireland is a very small country full of great writers even today and I love the place for that despite this present -and the previous government’s -visceral dislike of all the arts. The only Irish politician who ever paid more than lip service to the arts in Ireland was one Charles J.Haughey. Don’t get me going.
I should also mention that Jimmie Joyce, as my granny called him, wrote nixers for captions for my grandfather’s satirical magazine ‘The Lepraucaun’, some posted from Trieste where he was living at the time.
OSCAR WILDE by Jim FitzPatrick
Oscar was always hated in establishment quarters in England and always much loved in Ireland. We loved his wit, his perfect put-downs, his bon mots and his funny, erudite and thoughtful plays. More than anything he epitomised freedom of thought and freedom of expression and did he pay the price for that, traduced, destroyed and jailed famously in Reading Goal (Jail). Now we have a superb and newly iconic statue of Oscar right opposite his house on Merrion Square, Dublin so we can all do a selfie with him, me included :)
I did two posters of Oscar, one in two-colour purples and a black and white one to fit the series I was working on back then.
W.B.YEATS by Jim FitzPatrick
W.B.Yeats was, and still is, my own favourite poet, from ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ to ‘The Lake Isle of Inisfree’ and of course, ’The Song of Wandering Aengus’. I have no personal connection to the great man but I always remember his son Senator Michael Yeats -who looked the absolute spitting image of him -sitting beside us at lunch hour every day in Neary’s Pub, engrossed in his Irish Times. I brought this poster in one day and held it up deliberately so he could see over my shoulder and got a good laugh out of him.
BRENDAN BEHAN by Jim FitzPatrick
The craziest of the writers and a real character around the bars of Dublin. I remember him well too. He and the other Behan brothers, Jimmy and Dominick, used to drink in The Bailey Pub. Not the pastiche we see today but the original, owned by my friend John Ryan (who saved the door of Joyces famous Eccles Street house and installed it in the Bailey). I actually j helped him stand upright just outside the Pen Corner off Dame Street and guided him into the Banker pub then I legged it as he started roaring. His widow Beatrice, a gentle, warm, and superbly read woman was a good friend of mine too when I was a young artist. Beatrice held lovely literary parties in her house on Adelaide road and had the place full of left wing radicals so I fitted right in.
I liked Jimmy Behan. He once shared a podium two seats away from Chairman Mao himself at a gathering in one of those vast halls for the Chinese Communist Party. The joke in Dublin was: ‘Who’s that up on the podium with Jimmy Behan?’—————————————————————
A4 8.30”x 11.7” and A3 16.5″ x 11.69″ prints are Signed Open Edition. All prints are printed by me(Jim FitzPatrick) in my studio.
I have also A2: 24x16 and A1: 33x23 Signed and numbered Limited editions. Please message me for further details.
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Buy any two prints and get one of equal or lesser value FREE!
Just buy two prints and then once bought add a note or contact me to let me know which other print you wish to receive.
ALL PRINTS SIGNED BY ME.