Scully was born in Dublin in 1945 and grew up in the south of London, where his family moved in 1949. He is known for rich, painterly abstractions in which stripes or blocks of layered color are a prevailing motif. The delineated geometry of his work, achieved through the use of repetitive forms such as squares, rectangles, and bands, provides structure for an expressive, physical rendering of color, light, and texture. Though these abstract compositions are not conventional landscapes, his sense of shape and light appeals to a universal understanding and is influenced by the three places he knows best: Ireland, his birthplace and homeland; north London, where he grew up; and New York, where today he mainly lives and works. The stripe has been central to Scully’s work over the course of his career. The artist has transformed the motif of the stripe into an expressive art form, employing colour contrasts and juxtapositions, that creates diverse and emotive compositions with a powerful physical presence. The architectonic structure of Scully’s work derived from twentieth-century artist Mondrian, however, from the beginning of his career, Scully was interested in the work of the Abstract Expressionists, particularly Mark Rothko. Like the Russian artist, Scully’s colour combinations are emotionally charged and illustrate the innate spirituality that is present throughout Scully’s oeuvre.

Sean Scully

Since the 1960s, Sean Scully has made abstract canvases that feature stripes, blocks, and grids painted in rich, evocative hues.

Since the 1960s, Sean Scully has made abstract canvases that feature stripes, blocks, and grids painted in rich, evocative hues. His soft edges and uneven paint applications lend a sense of tactility to his compositions, which focus on the complex interplay of material, light, and form. Scully’s work—which also includes printmaking, drawing, watercolor, and sculpture—combines formal rigor with spontaneity, exploring what the artist describes as a tension between system and emotion. Scully has been the subject of solo shows at the Albertina, the National Gallery in London, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, the Guangdong Museum of Art, and the Central Academy of Fine Art. His work has sold for up to seven figures on the secondary market and belongs in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Walker Art Center, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Tate, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

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