Theodore "Theo" McNab (1940–2015) was an Irish painter, known for his

minimalist In visual arts, music, and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in the post-war era in western art. The movement is often interpreted as a reaction to abstract expressionism and modernism; it anticipated contemporary post-mi ...

landscapes. He was a member of

Aosdána Aosdána ( , ; from , 'people of the arts') is an Irish association or academy of artists, each of whom must have produced a distinguished body of work of genuine originality. It was created in 1981 by the country's Arts Council on the initiati ...

, an elite Irish association of artists.

Early life

McNab was born in

Dublin Dublin is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. Situated on Dublin Bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, and is bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, pa ...

in 1940.

Career

McNab never received formal artistic training, being largely

self-taught Autodidacticism (also autodidactism) or self-education (also self-learning, self-study and self-teaching) is the practice of education without the guidance of schoolmasters (i.e., teachers, professors, institutions). Overview Autodi ...

. His works often depict

grid Grid, The Grid, or GRID may refer to: Space partitioning * Regular grid, a tessellation of space with translational symmetry, typically formed from parallelograms or higher-dimensional analogs ** Grid graph, a graph structure with nodes connec ...

structures, similar to Charles Tyrrell. McNab first exhibited in 1971 in Dublin and had a one-man show in 1973. He won the Scott Tallon Walker Prize at the Oireachtas Exhibition in 1976. His work was shown at Rosc in 1980. He was elected to

in 1981. McNab was head of Fine Arts at the

National College of Art and Design The National College of Art and Design (NCAD) is Ireland's oldest art institution, offering the largest range of art and design degrees at undergraduate and postgraduate level in the country. Originating as a drawing school in 1746, many of t ...

(NCAD, Dublin) from 1988 to 2000. His work is at the

Irish Museum of Modern Art The Irish Museum of Modern Art (), also known as IMMA, is Ireland's leading national institution for the collection and presentation of modern and contemporary art. It is located in Kilmainham, Dublin. History Irish art collector Gordon Lam ...

, the Hugh Lane Gallery , and the

University of Limerick University of Limerick (UL) () is a Public university, public research university institution in Limerick, Republic of Ireland, Ireland. Founded in 1972, as the National Institute for Higher Education, Limerick, it became a university in Septemb ...

's collection. McNab died in 2015.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:McNab, Theo Irish male painters Aosdána members Artists from Dublin (city) 20th-century Irish painters 21st-century Irish painters 21st-century Irish male artists 1940 births 2015 deaths Self-taught artists Irish contemporary artists Academics of the National College of Art and Design