Bringing modern art to drab old Ireland

A new book shows how the Rosc exhibitions were hugely influential, writes Alan O’Riordan

ROSC is an old Irish word meaning the ‘poetry of vision’, and for those who saw the first Rosc exhibition at the RDS in Dublin in 1967, it must indeed have seemed a visionary thing.

We are used to the newsreels of that drab time: The quiet streets of the capital, never mind anywhere else; the uniform clothing; the mandated piety of the Catholic Church. Yet, here, suddenly, was an exhibition of new paintings by the likes of Picasso, Roy Lichtenstein, and Juan Miro, among 51 artists selected.