Born: September 21st, 1950
Died: July 10th 2025
“To make is, for me, to make matter matter,” Irish sculptor, Michael Warren once said as he explained the role of artists to be open, selfless and receptive towards their materials in all their density and intractability.
The Wexford-based sculptor, who died earlier this month following a long illness, was the most internationally acclaimed Irish sculptor of his generation. Best known for his large-scale abstract outdoor public sculptures in Ireland and throughout the world, he also made smaller figurative pieces. He enjoyed working with wood most of all but also sculpted in steel, bronze, stone and concrete.
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Many people will know his work without realising it. In Dublin, large outdoor sculptures by Michael Warren are in Trinity College Dublin, at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin Castle and at the Civic Offices on Wood Quay. Outside of the capital, he has public works in Carlow, Clare, Cork, Galway, Kerry, Kilkenny, Limerick, Meath, Tipperary as well as at Oulart, Hill in his native Co Wexford.
But, arguably, Warren’s international reputation as a sculptor was much greater than the recognition he enjoyed in Ireland. “Michael Warren was the most important Irish sculptor in the last 50 years. From the early days, he was internationally known – exhibiting in Paris, Berlin and the United States and most of his major pieces of work are around the world,” says John Daly, a close friend and gallerist who represented Warren at the Hillsboro Fine Art gallery in Dublin.
Held in high esteem by peers including the English abstract sculptor, Anthony Caro, French art historian, Gérard Xuriguera, the late American sculptor, George Rickey, the late Italian sculptor, Mauro Staccioli and many others, Warren was regularly invited to partake in group shows in Germany, France, Belgium and the United States.
His commissioned site-specific works can be seen in Spain, Greece, France, Portugal, England, Morrocco, Saudi Arabia, the United States, Ecuador, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.
Early in his career, Warren struck up what would become a long and productive friendship with the eminent Irish architect, Ronnie Tallon. Over his career, many of the large scale sculpture installations in Ireland were commissioned by Tallon. These included Tulach a’t Solais, the striking bicentennial memorial to the 1798 rebellion on Oulart Hill, which was nominated for the Mies van der Rohe Architecture Prize.
More recently, key Irish exhibitions include Unbroken Line at VISUAL in Carlow in 2010 and Those Who Go/Those Who Stay at the Limerick City Gallery of Art in 2014.
“Although much of his work was architectural and minimalist, Michael was a romantic, expressive, soft person who never lost that childlike sense of wonder,” says Daly.
Family and friends also noted his ability to be kind and reflective, either serious or silly and loving both to perform and witness performance.
Warren firmly believed that true creativity was beyond individual control. “Between sculptor and material, there is a constant exchange of points of view, of proposal and counterproposal ... The temptation to control, to impose or to eagerly move towards a perceived goal, must be resisted,” he said. “Whatever the artist’s intellectual sympathies and interests might be, they should be set aside during the art of making.”
In 1981 Warren was elected to join the Irish artists organisation, Aosdána. In 2008 he became a member of the Royal Hibernian Academy and in 2012 he was awarded honorary membership of the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland – a rare honour for someone who wasn’t an architect by profession.
Michael Warren grew up the eldest of three children to Ella and George Warren. His father was an auctioneer and farmer and the family lived in a rambling two-storey 19th century farmhouse near Gorey.
With access to materials on the farm, he showed an early interest in the arts by making stage sets, painting scenery and putting on plays for relatives and neighbours, many of whom were cast in the productions.
For his secondary school education, he attended St Columba’s College in Rathfarnham, Dublin as a boarder. While there, he was deeply inspired by his art teacher, the sculptor Frank Morris. At school he made his first piece of sculpture, a female torso carved from a 2ft length of beech tree using gauge chisels.
In 1969, on the advice of Morris, he went to England to do his foundation year at Bath Academy of Art in Corsham. Renowned for its abstract sculpture and painting, the academy gave him a good introduction to the modernist movement.
It was there that his desire to be a sculptor rather than a painter was confirmed. He returned to Ireland to work as an apprentice to Morris whose death in 1970 was a deep shock to him. Morris’s widow, artist, Camille Souter later gifted her husband’s chisels to the young sculptor.
In 1970 Warren opted to study philosophy, psychology and English at Trinity College Dublin, soon realising that the academic world of books wasn’t for him. His parents respected his desire to study sculpture and acquiesced in his decision to move to Italy to study art at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan in 1971.
Over the next four years Warren soaked up the rich Italian appreciation for art and history, with regular visits to Verona, Venice, Florence and Rome.
Meanwhile in Milan, the sculptor Luciano Minguzzi – who made the great bronze doors for the front facade of Milan Cathedral – and Guido Ballo – an authority on 20th century art – were among his lecturers.
Warren wrote his thesis on the world famous San Sebastián born sculptor, Eduardo Chillida. “Chillida showed me the sculptural means of expressing a complex vision of a world in which paradox – paradoxes of stillness and movement, absence and presence are not excluded,” he told art critic Brian McAvera in an interview for the Irish Arts Review in 2016.
During his time in Milan, his work began to change from a closed contained form to open form sculpture where the space itself becomes part of the expression. The writings of philosopher and mystic, Simone Weil were also a formative influence.
Back in Ireland – having moved into a farmhouse near his parents’ home, Warren began to get public commissions – first for University College Galway [now University of Galway] in 1977, then at the RTÉ studios in Donnybrook and at Dublin Port Authority. He also partook in the London exhibition, A Sense of Ireland and the Salon de Mai in Paris.
In 1978 he met Spanish woman Maria Dolores Armenteros, who was in Dublin to study English. Within four years the couple were married in Gorey, Co Wexford.
The farmhouse, renamed Le Tatlin by Warren in honour of the Russian artist and architect, became the family home where their children, Cristina and George grew up and where Warren worked on his sculptures. Locally, he lent his support to the establishment of the Gorey School of Art.
Sheds served as workshops, the Ronnie Tallon designed studio became the contemplative space for finishing pieces and the surrounding fields – outdoor spaces to display works for clients. “My parents were a great double act. My father showed visitors around and talked to them about the works in the studio and garden, and then back in the house, my mother, a fantastic hostess, had wonderful lunch waiting for them,” says Cristina Warren.
Warren’s health declined in the last eight years of his life during which time he relied on the loving care and support of his wife, Maria, and son, George.
Michael Warren is survived by his wife, Maria, his daughter, Cristina, his son, George, his brother, Richard, sister, Elaine, son-in-law, Eric and daughter-in-law, Eloise.
