Fine Jewellery, Watches, Silver & Coins 22nd November 2023 at 12pm

6 S P O T L I G H T O N A N A R T I S T Graham Knuttel ( 1 9 5 4 - 2 0 2 3 ) Graham Knuttel was born in Dublin in the summer of 1954 to parents Frederic, from Germany, and Margaret, from England. His parents had been living in England before Graham was born, but after the second world war, they moved to Ireland; similarly, his father had moved to England from Germany in his youth with his mother to escape the war torn land left behind by the first world war. Knuttel’s artistic abilities were encouraged by his parents, and according to the artist himself, he let his academic life fall by the wayside to purposely fail his Leaving Cer t exams so that he could pursue a creative career at third-level. He was formally educated in ar t at the Dun Laoghaire College of Ar t & Design, though he did not have the same success there that he experienced once he left. Knuttel’s paintings are distinctive with their figures with overly exaggerated facial features and contrasting colours, however, this was not necessarily welcomed by his lecturers and teachers. In order to graduate from college, he had to move into the plastic ar ts and become a sculptor, however, these are not the works that he is known for today. Once Knuttel finally did graduate from ar t college, he had a string of different jobs, including a butler and a grave digger. It was not until the late 1908s that he began to find some genuine success as an artist. In 1987, owner of the Apollo Gallery, Hugh Charlton, began to show Graham Knuttel’s work; and from that moment on the ar tist established a dedicated fanbase.A significant number of his fanbase are celebrities in their own right, namely Sylvester Stallone, Frank Sinatra, Robert De Niro, andWhoopi Goldberg. His work became extremely popular and highly collectable, par ticularly during the Celtic Tiger in Ireland. Knuttel’s ar twork is heavily influenced by his early childhood and he found a way to channel his trauma into his compositions in an alternative way. One example of LIVE AUCTION OF FINE JEWELLERY, WATCHES, SILVER & COINS • WEDNESDAY, 22nd NOV 2023 AT 12PM