The National Gallery of Ireland has an unrivalled collection of the work of Jack B. Yeats. Others may have amassed greater concentrations of big set-piece pictures, but the gallery has what amounts to a full, rounded collection of every aspect of the artist's work, including a treasure trove of archival material in the form of sketchbooks. Finally, the long awaited Jack B. Yeats Museum will open at the Gallery in February, with Yeats expert Hilary Pyle as curator, and, as the painter's popularity spreads, it should become a major attraction for visitors.
For more than a decade Hughie O'Donoghue devoted himself to what sounds like a quixotically grand project: a contemporary treatment of one of the major themes in Western art, the Passion of Christ. His efforts resulted in a series of monumental figurative paintings and drawings that have been exhibited so far in Munich and, Kilkenny, where he is now based.
His work was funded by a patron who wishes to remain anonymous, and this patron has now given the works as a gift to the Irish State. Overseen by the OPW, this month they go on show at the Gallagher Gallery in Ely Place, before they are dispersed to various locations.
The German artist Joseph Beuys is a figure of almost mythical status in post-war European art. A revolutionary figure who believed that art is a force for social change, Beuys experienced a Pauline conversion when, as a Luftwaffe pilot during the war, he was shot down on the Eastern Front and saved by Tartar tribesmen, who wrapped his burnt body in fat and felt - substances that he later used extensively in his work.
In recent years his influence shows signs of waning, but it will be interesting to see Joseph Beuys: Multiples at IMMA in May, a major exhibition featuring roughly 300 works from the Walker Centre in Minneapolis. By multiples, Beuys meant works that exist in editions. Felt and fat are sure to feature.
James Dixon was by far the best of the Tory Island School, the group of painters encouraged by Derek Hill. His work displays a real feeling for depicting the world he knew best: the extreme environment of Tory and the omnipresent sea. His Cornish counterpart was Alfred Wallis, the fisherman who also came late to painting and turned out to have a unique vision, one appreciated by Ben Nicholson and the other St Ives artists. An exhibition at IMMA in September brings together the work of these two men for the first time.
Also, keep an eye out for Belgian painter Luc Tuymans at the Douglas Hyde in April; a retrospective by sculptor Melanie le Brocquy at the end of June in the Gallagher; German neo-expressionist K.H. Hodicke's take on the west of Ireland at the Gallagher in September and Kathy Prendergast's city map drawings at IMMA in December.
Big shows in London include Monet in the 20th Century at the Royal Academy this month and the Jackson Pollock retrospective at the Tate in March. And the Musee d'Art Moderne in Paris features the Mark Rothko retrospective this month.
At the end of April, in Belfast's Ormeau Baths Gallery, Brian Maguire will exhibit elements of the work from his XXIV Sao Paulo Bienal show, plus a new commission. Maguire represented Ireland at Sao Paulo, where he exhibited portraits of children living in a shanty town, together with photographs of the portraits in the children's own homes, and portraits of prisoners adapted from the tabloid press.
