Over the course of his 50-year career, Sean Scully has created an influential body of work that has markedthe development of contemporary abstraction. Fusing the traditions of European painting with the distinctcharacter of American abstraction, his work combines painterly drama with great visual delicacy. Oftenstructured around stripes or layered blocks of colour arranged on horizontal and vertical axes, the layers in hispaintings attain a fine balance between calm reflection and an intrinsic vitality.
A forceful, physical artist, Scully creates intentionally compelling spaces, and his art is defined by acuteconcentration and care, involving constant negotiation between the monumental and the intimate. Whilegiving primary importance to the physicality of the materials he employs, his art is commanded by the idea ofhumanity’s betterment, and at the heart of each rigorously composed work lies a near-infinite number ofexpressive, emotional fluctuations.
During a trip to Morocco in 1969, Scully was strongly influenced by the rich colours of the region, which hetranslated into the broad horizontal and vertical stripes and deep earth tones that characterise his maturestyle. Following fellowships in 1972 and 1975 at Harvard University, he permanently relocated to NewYork. In the early 1980s, he made the first of several influential trips to Mexico, where he used watercolour forthe first time in works inspired by the patterns of light and shadows he saw on the stacked stones of ancientwalls. The experience had a decisive effect on him and cemented his move away from Minimalism andtowards a more emotional and humanistic form of abstraction.
In 1998, following additional trips to Mexico, Scully began to create his landmark Wall of Light series. Theseworks were shown in 2005–07 at The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; Modern Art Museum of FortWorth, Texas; Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio; and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
In recentyears, Scully has also increasingly turned to sculpture, creating monumental structures that engage with theunique energy and history of their locations. Stacks of coins and beams, rusted steel grids and walls ofinterlocking bricks – the sculptures expand towards the sky and along the landscape, giving a spatialdimension to Scully's colouristic exploration of materials and form.
Born in Dublin, Scully studied at Croydon School of Art and Newcastle University in the UK, where he beganexperimenting with abstraction.
His work has been exhibited in prestigious institutions worldwide, includingthe Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris; Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City; Museum of Modern Art,New York; National Gallery, London; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; National Gallery of Ireland,Dublin; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; SmithsonianAmerican Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, among others.
In2014 he was the first Western artist to receive a major retrospective at the Shanghai Himalayas Museum andat the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing.
Galerie Lelong
