Rodrigo Moynihan

(Herbert George) Rodrigo Moynihan (17 October 1910 – 6 November 1990) was an English painter, credited with being a pioneer of abstract painting in England. and Maria (née de la Puerta).

In the 1930s he gained a reputation as a pioneer of abstract painting in England as a member of the Objective Abstraction movement. Moynihan was later attracted to social realism and became associated from 1937 with the Euston Road School.

Wartime camoufleur, war artist Moynihan served in the British Army from 1940 to 1943, first in the Royal Artillery and then doing camouflage work. Following an injury, he was given a full-time salaried commission by the War Artists' Advisory Committee, WAAC, having previously completed a number of short-term contracts for the Committee. He completed a number of portraits of ATS and senior, male, military figures for this contract and also for subsequent shorter WAAC contracts Moynihan was appointed an Associate Member of the Royal Academy in 1944.

Postwar career

After the war, he was professor of painting at the Royal College of Art 1948–1957, and was elected a full member of the Royal Academy in 1954. At this period, he was in demand for official portraits, and executed commissions of amongst others Princess Elizabeth (1946) and Prime Minister Clement Attlee (1947). He changed direction from 1957, resigning from the Royal College of Art and the Royal Academy and returning to abstraction, working outside England in Europe and North America.

Awards and distinctions Moynihan was re-elected to the Royal Academy in 1979. He has paintings in the collection of several British institutions including the Glasgow Museums, Derby Art Gallery and in the Imperial War Museum.

Family life Moynihan married artist Elinor Bellingham-Smith in 1931. They had one son, John Moynihan. They divorced in the late 1950s, and in 1960 he married fellow-artist Anne Dunn with whom he had a second son Daniel "Danny" Moynihan. They went to live in the south of France.