Brian Maguire: La Grande Illusion

September 5, 2025 – March 7, 2026
USF Contemporary Art Museum

Admission: Exhibition and events are free and open to all.
Hours: Mon-Fri 10am-5pm; Thu 10am-8pm; Sat 1-4pm
Closed: Sundays and USF Holidays (January 19 for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday; no classes & USF offices closed)

EVENTS

2/6/26 - Gallery Conversation with Brian Maguire and Maggie Kusenbach

PRESS

1/1/2026 - The Sun Shines on Florida's Art - Kelly Compton, Fine Art Connoisseur Magazine

9/16/2025 - La Grande Illusion, cuando la pintura se convierte en memoria | La Grande Illusion, when painting becomes memory - Yael Hervert, CATARXIS

9/3/2025 - Irish artist/activist Brian Maguire at USF Contemporary Art Museum - Chadd Scott, See Great Art

8/25/2025 - Brush to canvas: News from the art community Two new shows at Creative Pinellas, and a visit from famed Irish painter Brian Maguire. - Bill DeYoung, Catalyst

Download Press Release

Brian Maguire, Over Our Heads the Hollow Seas Closed Up, 2016. acrylic on linen, 114-1/8 x 106-1/4 inches. Tia Collection, Sante Fe, NM. © Brian Maguire. Image courtesy of Kerlin Gallery, Dublin.

USFCAM presents a major exhibition of works by internationally acclaimed artist, Brian Maguire. Entitled La Grande Illusion, the exhibition spans two decades of work that spotlights the artist's lifelong quest to draw attention to global injustices, war, and human rights. One of Ireland's leading cultural figures, Maguire has turned the practice and tradition of painting into acts of visual testimony.

Maguire's paintings are global in scope and are derived from projects undertaken between 2007 and 2024 in Mexico, the Mediterranean, Syria, Sudan, the United States, and the Amazon. Maguire's artworks are painted from direct experience and involve the artist spending extensive time on the ground with the communities that welcome him. The results are, plainly put, paintings that visualize the commonality of human suffering and dramatize the plight of people in need.

Brian Maguire, Bentiu International Displacement Camp, South Sudan 1, 2018. acrylic on linen, 78-3/4 x 157-1/2 inches. © Brian Maguire. Image courtesy of Kerlin Gallery, Dublin.

La Grande Illusion examines a period of intense productivity for Maguire. It explores his activism through large-scale paintings made in response to time spent in Juárez, Mexico (2012–15), the Mediterranean (2016), Aleppo (2017), South Sudan (2018), the Amazon (2022), Arizona (2022) and Brazil (2022–23). His paintings track global themes. Among these are migration, economic inequality, the drug and gun trades, sexual violence, and ongoing damage to the environment. By embedding himself in the communities he paints—from Juarez's streets to the war-torn neighborhoods of Aleppo—Maguire uses his canvases' large format to represent populations that have been silenced and forgotten.

Maguire's work has been celebrated in museums and galleries worldwide, igniting critical conversations on human rights through his intimate and visceral canvases. In representing populations erased by textbook history, official art, the media, and state institutions, Maguire reminds us of how the practice of painting can be made to matter. As he explains:

"The image carries the present, the medium carries the hope. The perpetrators of the injustice are worldwide and singular and that's what makes the stories the same. The individual painting is anecdotal but when taken as a body of work, it represents a global order which, while invisible, is at the same time all pervasive."

Brian with a grandmother from Missoula whose granddaughter Brian painted for the family. Still from the documentary The Life of Brian (Maguire). Image courtesy of Bang Bang Teo.

Brian Maguire: La Grande Illusion has been adapted by USFCAM Curator-at-Large Christian Viveros-Fauné from the Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin's exhibition of the same name (it was originally co-curated by Barbara Dawson, Hugh Lane Gallery Director, and Michael Dempsey, Head of Exhibitions). It is accompanied by a brochure and a full-length catalog featuring essays by writers Lucy Cotter, Marc Donnadieu, Michael Dempsey and Viveros-Fauné. Also on view inside USFCAM's galleries: the 2025 documentary The Life of Brian (Maguire) described in the press as "The incredible life story of an internationally renowned artist who goes to the frontline to tell the real story of the world." The Life of Brian (Maguire) was directed by Mark Mc Loughlin for Bang Bang Teo and supported by RTÉ, Hugh Lane Gallery and Creative Ireland.

Brian Maguire: La Grande Illusion is organized by USF Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa. Support for the exhibition is provided by a grant from Culture Ireland, The Stanton Storer Embrace the Arts Foundation, Shumaker Inc. / Ronald Christaldi, the Lee and Victor Leavengood Contemporary Art Museum Endowment Fund, the Kathleen Binnicker Swann Endowment, and the Allen W. and Janet G. Root CAM Endowment.

EXHIBITION BROCHURE

View and download a 3MB pdf of the Brian Maguire: La Grande Illusion brochure.

VIRTUAL TOUR

Explore this virtual 360 degree interactive walkthrough of Brian Maguire: La Grande Illusion. For the best experience click the View Fullscreen icon in the lower right of the window. Virtual tour Courtesy of USF Access 3D Lab, Dr. Laura Harrison.