The White Stag Group was a group of artists centred around the painters Basil Rakoczi

Basil Rakoczi

Basil Ivan Rákóczi was an artist born in London. He was a prominent and leading member of the Irish art group, the White Stag, along with Kenneth Hall.-Biography:...

 and Kenneth Hall

Kenneth Hall (artist)

Kenneth Hall was a British artist who co-founded The White Stag group with Basil Rakoczi.Born in Farnham, Surrey and educated at Lancing College, he was designing furniture in London before he showed his work to the dealer Lucy Wertheim who offered to put him on at show at her gallery in Mayfair...

.

Founded in London in 1935, the group moved to Ireland in 1939 and stayed until after the Second World War. Their group philosophy, which they called Subjectivist Art was not associated with any particular style or set belief, instead, it encouraged an exploration of psychology

Psychology

Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...

 and of modernist

Modernism

Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...

 ideas. They also believed in aesthetic experimentation and aesthetics

Aesthetics

Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...

 as an objective in art. Although formed in London and guided by two British born artists (Hall and Rakozci) the group has been described as "an Irish phenomenon" by the Irish art expert Dr. S B Kennedy.

The group was at the vanguard of modern artistic ideas in Ireland, were involved in the Irish Exhibition of Living Art and influenced Patrick Scott

Patrick Scott

Patrick Scott is an Irish artist.Patrick Scott had his first exhibition in 1944, but trained as an architect and did not become a full time artist until 1960. He worked for fifteen years for the Irish architect Michael Scott, assisting, for example, in the design of Busáras, the central bus...

, Gerald Dillon

Gerald Dillon

Gerard Dillon was an Irish artist.Born in Belfast, he left school at the age of fourteen and for seven years worked as a painter and decorator, mostly in London. From an early age he was interested in art, cinema, and theatre. About 1936 he started out as an artist, almost entirely self-taught but...

 and Louis le Brocquy

Louis le Brocquy

Louis le Brocquy is an Irish painter born in Dublin. His work has received many accolades in a career that spans seventy years of creative practice...

. The Irish composer Brian Boydell

Brian Boydell

Brian Boydell was an Irish composer whose works include orchestral pieces, chamber music, and songs. He was professor of music at Trinity College, Dublin for 20 years, founder of the Dowland Consort, conductor of the Dublin Orchestral Players, and a prolific broadcaster and writer on musical...

, at that time a visual artist, was also a member of the group. The Irish Museum of Modern Art

Irish Museum of Modern Art

The Irish Museum of Modern Art also known as IMMA, is Ireland's leading national institution exhibiting and collecting modern and contemporary art. The museum opened in May 1991 and is located in Royal Hospital Kilmainham, a 17th-century building near Heuston Station to the west of Dublin's city...

 is putting on a White Stag retrospective during the summer of 2005.

External links

• The Irish Museum of Modern Art announce their White Stag exhibition.
• irishabroad.com article on Irish art during the Emergency with a discussion of the White Stag Group.