Imogen from the Heart is a fascinating new RTÉ arts documentary about one of Ireland's most celebrated artists, sculptor Imogen Stuart.
After growing up in an artistic half-Jewish family in Berlin during World War II, Imogen met a young Irish sculptor student, Ian Stuart. They fell in love and moved to Ireland - Ian Stuart was the grandson of Maud Gonne, and Imogen resided in their family home in Laragh Co. Wicklow. Over the following 70 years, Imogen Stuart created an extraordinary body of work, which is located all over the island of Ireland and beyond. Now in her mid 90's, Stuart is still busy creating.
Her grandson Emile Dinneen has spent the last 13 years filming her, giving us an intimate window into how she has coped with loss and tragedy while sharing her views on family, art, religion, and the meaning of life. He introduces Imogen from the Heart below.
My grandmother Imogen's last sculpture in wood was her self-portrait, a life-sized carving in mature French oak which she started in 2010 at the age of 82. An extremely hard wood to work with, it was around this time she began complaining of heart palpitations. Thinking that maybe she didn't have long left, I decided to document what I thought might be the last few years of her life.
Work continued on the self-portrait into the autumn of that year. Late one evening in November, Imogen called the ambulance suffering from difficulty breathing, and was rushed to hospital where they discovered a hole in her heart. Thankfully she survived the subsequent operation, and less than a month later she was back in her workshop, hammering away at her self-portrait.
Little did I expect that 13 years later I would still be filming this seemingly indomitable woman.
As a child I had heard about the footage Imogen’s father, a German art critic, journalist and writer (and amateur film-maker) had shot of her and her sister Sibylle growing up in Nazi Germany. Finally getting to see these old black and white 8mm film reels, I realised what a visual goldmine I had access to - over 2 hours of footage of her childhood growing up at the heart of the third reich in 1930’s and 40’s Berlin.
It was then that the the idea of a biographical film, weaving in and out of her memories, of childhood during the war, of her arrival into a deeply conservative Ireland and marriage into the family of Maud Gonne, and her rise to prominence through her prodigious output as a sculptor began to come together. And while she is known primarily for her enormous body of work in churches around Ireland, my grandmother never struck me as driven by any sort of doctrine. In making the film I wanted to explore her unique faith, and what keeps her working, curious and excited about life.
features in 'Imogen From The Heart'
Just after the pandemic I was fortunate to bump into an old friend and producer, Oda O'Carroll, at the Borris Festival of Writing and Ideas. She introduced me to her longtime collaborator, producer/director Adrian McCarthy, and we approached RTÉ with the project, who thankfully came on board with money to complete the film. It was then the real hard work took place - honing a 50 minute narrative from material shoot over ten years and 8 decades of archive. We were fortunate to find a great editor in Mirjam Strugalla who worked with us over three months to craft the story and deliver the film.
In 2023, at 96 years old with two recent major retrospectives of her work and the National Gallery adding her self-portrait to their permanent collection, Imogen asked me how the film was coming along. I explained that I had planned on filming her until the end. She laughed heartily and said that as much as she loved spending time with her grandson, it was probably time to finish the film. She was right.
Thankfully, today Imogen is still alive and still laughing. And while her walking may have slowed in the last few years, she certainly hasn’t stopped working - her current project is a new collection of silver and gold jewellery, a fitting compliment to a pair of eyes which have seen so much and still sparkle after all these years.
Imogen from the Heart, RTÉ One, Thursday Dec 7th at 10.15 pm - catch up afterwards via RTÉ Player.
