WHYTE'S IMPORTANT IRISH ART 29 NOVEMBER 2021 AT 6PM

174 143 Graham Knuttel (b.1954) PLANET HOLLYWOOD oil on canvas; (unframed) signed lower left 100 by 72in. (254 by 182.9cm) Provenance: Collection of La Stampa, Dublin; Private collection Graham Knuttel was born in Dublin in 1954. His German father, who served in the Royal Air Force, and his English mother moved to Ireland in 1947. Knuttel is related through his mother to the founder of the Newlyn School of Painters, Thomas Cooper Gotch as well as the famous actor Cary Grant. Knuttel never cared much for academia and spent little time in school, instead spending his time exploring the cafe and pub society of Dublin as well as its rocky coastline. In his time away from school he began to absorb himself in drawing and art. He enrolled in the Dún Laoghaire College of Art and Design at the age of eighteen and the bohemian lifestyle of art school suited him well. It was during his time at Dún Laoghaire that his training led him to his beloved craft of figurative representational painting. The college would not appreciate his style of painting and therefore Knuttel had to make the transition from painting to sculpture to pass his final year of college. Although this transition was undesired, Knuttel discovered a new passion for the craft. He received his diploma for an exhibition of mechanical wooden sculptures of a bird as well as medieval-themed pieces of a shield and a portcullis. After college Knuttel worked for a time at RTÉ under the famous artistic director, Alpho O’Reilly, and judging by art he created at that time he continued to develop his unique style within a graphic design studio of some renown. Knuttel began exhibiting in the 1980s, at Hugh Charleton’s Duke Street Gallery ( later renamed The Apollo Gallery), and it was there his work attracted the attention of Sylvester Stallone who started to collect his work and through him Knuttel’s work began to be hung in Hollywood mansions of Stallone’s friends. The brainchild of Louis Murray, a well-known Dublin nightclub owner and entrepreneur, La Stampa opened as a brasserie in 1990. The restaurant quickly became one of Dublin’s most fashionable places to dine. It closed in 2007. In 1990 Knuttel met up with Louis Murray and came to an arrangement to display his paintings in La Stampa, where they were admired and purchased by the eclectic celebrities who wined and dined there. The paintings offered here are from the walls of La walls of La Stampa, which closed in 2007 and are colourful totems of the Celtic Tiger days of the mid-nineties to the mid-noughties. Knuttel received many commissions including bronzes of architectural historian Maurice Craig (1990), painter Patrick Collins HRHA (1990) and John B. Keane (1996), as well as oil portraits of singer Christy Moore (1993), boxing promoter Don King (1997) and actor Robert De Niro (1999). In 1981, he co-founded the Wicklow Fine Art Press. Among many creative works he designed ceramic wares for Tipperary Crystal and his work has featured on Irish postage stamps. He also designed a large silver chess set, produced in a limited edition by English furniture designer Viscount Linley, now Lord Snowdon, Queen Elizabeth’s nephew. More recently Graham Knuttel had his own gallery in Las Vegas and garnered more collectors of his work there. Lately Knuttel has battled illness but still manages to produce distinctive works of quality and popularity, though not on the scale of the La Stampa masterpieces offered in this sale. €10,000-€15,000 (£8,470-£12,710 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot143