Timothy Taylor Gallery

In a career spanning over thirty years, Sean Scully has gained international prominence as one of the most admired painters in the abstract tradition. Fusing the traditions of European painting with the distinct character of American abstraction, Scully’s great achievement is the reinvigoration of abstract painting with the metaphorical, the philosophical and the sublime combined with the earthy tangibility of pure paint.

In the 1980s, Scully moved away from his precisely gridded works of the 1970s, to create a uniquely sculptural form of painting: consisting of monumental interconnecting 3D panels worked in strong earthy colours with hand-drawn lines and stripes. Subtly figurative despite their resolute abstraction, their ‘humanity of imperfection’ as Sue Hubbard described it, powerfully suggested fragility and fallibility. More recently, Scully’s Wall of Light paintings have been described as ‘visual utopias’ by David Carrier, interrelated bricks of colour betray no figurative impulse or visual hierarchy. An evocative layering of colours, suggests the inevitability of time passing, while the sheer physicality of the paintings keeps them always connected to the real.

Recent touring solo Museum exhibitions include:

Sean Scully: Works from the 80s, VISUAL Centre for Contemporary Art, Carlow, Ireland, 5 February – 1 April 2010; Leeds Art Gallery, Leeds, England, 27 May – 8 August, 2010, Wilhelm-Hack Museum, Ludwigshafen, Germany, 29 January – 8 May, 2011

Constantinople or The Sensual Concealed. The Imagery of Sean Scully, (touring 2009/10), curated by Susanne Kleine, The MKM – Centre for Modern and Contemporary Art, Duisburg; The Ulster Museum, Belfast; Neues Museum Weserburg, Bremen; Kunstsammlungen, Chemnitz

Sean Scully: A Retrospective, (tour: 2007/08), curated by Danilo Eccher, Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona; Musée d’Art Moderne de Saint-Etienne Métropole and MACRO al Mattatoio, Rome

Sean Scully. Wall of Light, (tour: 2005/07), curated by Stephen Phillips, The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C.; The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth; Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Scully’s work is held by numerous public collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The National Gallery of Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth; the Tate, London; Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen K20K21, Düsseldorf; the Albertina, Vienna; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid and Instituto Valencia d’Arte Modern, Valencia.

Sean Scully lives and works in New York, Barcelona and Munich.

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