The Friends were able to present to the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), at their request, an important painting by Mary Swanzy (1882-1978), “The Melee“, which we purchased at de Vere’s auction. This work has been frequently exhibited since it was painted in 1931 and is described by Sean Kissane, curator of exhibitions at IMMA, as “a significant transitional work, one of the first images she made in the surrealist/expressionist style that would come to define her late work from the 1940s on”.
