Product Code Database
Example Keywords: pajamas -winter $38
barcode-scavenger
   » » Wiki: Sean Scully
Tag Wiki 'Sean Scully'.
Tag

Sean Scully (born 30 June 1945) is an Irish-born American-based artist working as a painter, , sculptor and photographer. His work is held in museum collections worldwide and he has twice been named a nominee. Moving from London to New York in 1975, Scully helped lead the transition from Minimalism to Emotional abstraction in painting, abandoning the reduced vocabulary of Minimalism in favour of a return to metaphor and spirituality in art.

Scully has also been a lecturer and professor at a number of universities and his writing and teachings are collected in the 2016 book Inner: The Collected Writings and Selected Interviews of Sean Scully.


Early life
Sean Scully was born in , Ireland, on 30 June 1945. Four years later his family moved to London where they lived in a working-class part of south London, moving from lodging to lodging for a number of years. By the age of 9, Scully knew he wanted to become an artist, and from the age of 15 until he was 17, Scully was apprenticed at a commercial printing shop in London as a typesetter, an experience that greatly influenced the art to come.

From the age of 17 until he turned 20, despite working full-time in various jobs including graphic design, and messenger, Scully attended evening classes at the Central School of Art, focused on figurative painting. While working a stint as a plasterer's labourer on the Victoria Station Ballroom, Scully made daily visits to the Tate Milbank to visit Van Gogh's Chair (1888), which made an impression on him. In 1963, at the age of 18, Scully had a job loading trucks with flattened boxes at a cardboard factory. The idea of stacking central to much of his work came from this experience.


Education
In September 1965 Sean Scully, age 20, began to study full-time at Croydon College of Art, London. As part of his course he attended Camberwell School of Art to study printmaking. He then moved on to Newcastle University in 1968. At Newcastle University, the University Theatre's production of ’s Waiting for Godot made a lasting impact on him. Scully was also influenced by a trip to in 1969, where he became fascinated by the multi-colored stripes locals wove into wool tents and robes.
(2025). 9780231141154, Columbia University Press. .
Scully was awarded the Frank Knox Memorial Fellowship in 1972 to attend Harvard University. It was during this first stay in the US that Scully began to experiment with new techniques such as tape and spray paint.
(2015). 9780500772942, Thames & Hudson. .


Career

Early career: 1970–1980
Scully's first commercial show, at the Rowan Gallery in London, sold out. During this period Scully taught at the Chelsea College of Art and Design, and Goldsmith's, while continuing to paint in his Elephant Lane studio in . In 1975, at the age of 30, Scully was awarded a two-year Harkness Fellowship with which he moved to New York.

Once in New York, he began to develop important friendships with fellow artists such as , and others in academic and artistic circles. Scully's response in the 1970s had been to bring the objectives of American Minimalism together with those of , an important current in Europe, creating works using overlays and “supergrids” that bridged these two artistic movements in a new way.

(1994). 9780271042978, Penn State Press. .
Once in New York, Minimalism had a strong influence on his work, and for a few years, Scully's palette was reduced to the grey monochrome ‘Black paintings’ series.

Scully began working on the series known as The Catherine Paintings in 1979, while sharing his Duane Street studio with his third wife, the artist Catherine Lee. The idea behind the series was to choose the important painting Scully produced during each year together, that would then become part of a collection named after her. This was the beginning of Sean's own private collection of his work.


Departure from Minimalism: 1980–1982
By 1980 Scully considered himself to be at war with the movement of Minimalism in New York and wanted to bring more human elements into his art.
(2025). 9783775741644, Hatje Cantz.
He made multiple trips to Morocco and Mexico during this time, as he considered these trips to have “a direct bearing on what I think art should be doing – which is concentrating on what’s interesting, engaging, perverse, and beautiful about human nature.”Archived at Ghostarchive and the Https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynKoopfmNZU" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Wayback Machine: He later commented that “I had decided that what had been stripped out of painting—i.e., the ability to make relationships, to be metaphorical and referential, spiritual, poetic, all those things and aspects of human nature—had to be put back in if painting was to go forward.”
(2025). 9783775741644, Hatje Cantz.
In 1981 the first retrospective of Sean Scully's work was held at the in . This was also the year that Scully's confidence to withdraw from adherence to Minimalism became apparent, with the return of color and space, and the freehand drawing of stripes and visible brushstrokes, rather than the hard lines of tape. Scully had a breakthrough with the seminal 1981 painting Backs and Fronts, which had a profound impact in the 1982 exhibition 'Critical Perspectives' at the PS1 Contemporary Art Center.
(1994). 9780271042978, Penn State Press. .
This was a watershed painting which British conceptual artist has said “broke the logjam of American minimalist painting”.


Geometric Abstraction: 1982–present
In 1982 Scully began to work with the gallerist David McKee, an important relationship that lasted for a decade. During the summer of that year, Scully started producing small multi-panel works on found pieces of wood while staying in Montauk at the Edward Albee artist's colony. These works were titled Ridge, Plum, and Bear after the islands that surround Long Island. He also began applying a combination of rigid geometry and expressive texture and colour to larger paintings that year. A prime example of this was Heart of Darkness, inspired by the 1899 novella of the same name. Scully began collaborating with Mohammad O. Khalil in 1983, this was the first time he had collaborated with a printmaker and was the start of a career-long commitment to . That same year, Scully was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for Fine Arts.

In 1984, the Museum of Modern Art included Scully in their International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture. The following year Scully's first American solo museum exhibition was held at the Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute in 1985, and traveled to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Other major museums also began to acquire Scully's large-scale paintings, despite the dominant trend of the time tending towards . Scully's paintings from this period are heavy and physical in terms of both size and aesthetic, and make use of large-scale stretchers.

(2025). 9781903942147, Third Millennium Information Ltd. .

By 1987, Scully's work became less complex, flatter and smaller in scale, and began to include lighter color palettes beginning with Pale Fire in 1988. The same year, while experimenting with watercolours on a beach in Mexico, Scully created the first image that would become an extended meditation on architecture and light with the Wall of Light series.

(2025). 9780195335798, Oxford University Press. .
In 1989 the Whitechapel Gallery in London held a solo exhibition for Scully, which then travelled to Palacio Velázquez in Madrid and to the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus in Munich. These were Scully's first solo exhibitions in mainland Europe. The art critic Robert Hughes' 1989 piece for TIME magazine cemented Scully's increasing reputation.

The painting Why and What (Yellow) in 1988 was the first to incorporate an inset element of steel. By 1991 Scully expanded the use of steel, setting oil on linen insets into large steel panels. He also began the regular use of a checkerboard motif at this time, first hinted at in his Taped and Hidden Drawing paintings of the mid-1970s. In 1992, while teaching at Harvard University, Sean Scully revisited Morocco to film the BBC documentary The Artist's Journey: Sean Scully on Henri Matisse, with having visited Morocco in 1912 - 1913. 1993 saw the first exhibition of The Catherine Paintings, at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas. In 1994 he opened a second studio in , and he returned to Morocco in 1995, to spend more time in the country. Atlas Walls is a portfolio of Scully's photographic works taken during this trip.

In 1995 Scully returned to New York, moving into a large new studio in Chelsea, Manhattan. Chelsea Wall was the first painting to be made there. Scully received a number of invitations to speak at academic institutions, and participated in the lectures on the state of contemporary art in Britain, Europe and the US, held by the Ruskin School at Oxford University, England. In 1997, Scully's photography was exhibited for the first time at the Sala de Exposiciones Rekalde in Bilbao, Spain.

Scully participated in a colloquium in conjunction with the exhibition Richard Pousette-Dart at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1998. He visited in 1999, resulting in the photography portfolio Santa Domingo for Nené. That year, Scully's prints were given a retrospective at the Graphische Sammlung Albertina, in Vienna, Austria, and the Musée du Dessin et de l’Estampe Originale in . A catalogue raisonné of his prints from 1969 - 1999 was also published.


2001 - 2013
In 2001, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth acquired the complete Catherine series, eighteen paintings that each represent a year from the period 1979–1996, which was given a dedicated room for permanent exhibition in the new Museum building opened in 2002. In 2002 Scully was appointed Professor of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, a position he held through to 2007. A retrospective exhibition opened in 2004 at the Sara Hildén Art Museum in , Finland, which travelled to Klassik Stiftung Weimar, in Germany, and the National Gallery of Australia. While in Australia, Scully spent time travelling through the red desert interior. , Dublin]]

Between 2005 - 2006, Sean Scully's Wall of Light series was displayed at museums around the United States. This began with the exhibition Sean Scully: Wall of Light opened at The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C., and travelled to the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, the Cincinnati Art Museum, and finally the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art to great acclaim. The same year Scully travelled with a group of students from the Art Academy in Munich, to , an island off the Irish coast. It was here that the Aran portfolio of photographs were taken. In 2006 the Hugh Lane Gallery opened The Sean Scully Room, a dedicated, permanent installation of the artist's work, and the Bibliothèque nationale de France held an exhibition of his prints. Sean Scully: A Retrospective opened in 2007 at the Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, and travelled to the Musée d'art moderne (Saint-Étienne), and the Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Roma (MACRO) in Rome.

(2025). 9780500093382, Thames & Hudson. .
The National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. invited Scully to give the Elson Lecture in 2007.

The retrospective exhibition Constantinople or the Sensual Concealed: The Imagery of Sean Scully opened in 2009 at the MKM Museum Küppersmühlefür Moderne Kunst, in Duisburg, Germany, and travelled to the Ulster Museum, Belfast. In 2010 a tour of important early works from the 1980s started at the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Carlow, Ireland, and then travelled to the Leeds Art Gallery, and the Wilhelm-Hack-Museum in Ludwigshafen am Rhein. In 2011 the Chazen Museum of Art opened their new expansion of the museum with a solo exhibition of Scully's eight-part Liliane paintings on aluminum, and other works. Scully opened nine more solo museum exhibitions in 2012, including Notations: Sean Scully at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, as well as exhibitions at museums like MIMA, , the Lentos Kunstmuseum in , and in Valencia, Spain.


Reception in China and new projects: 2014–2017
In 2014, Scully opened a new studio space set on three acres in Tappan, New York, where he continued to extend the Landline series of paintings begun in 2000. That same year, Scully opened fourteen solo exhibitions around the world, including the first major retrospective by a western artist in China. The exhibition, entitled Follow the Heart: The Art of Sean Scully, opened in Beijing. The exhibition included China Piled-Up, a new monumental sculpture in corten-steel, and travelled from the Shanghai Himalayas Museum to the CAFA Art Museum in Beijing, to critical acclaim. Another outdoor sculpture Boxes Full of Air was commissioned at Chateau La Coste in France.

Scully participated in the for the first time, in 2015, with the solo exhibition Land Sea at the in Venice. The Museum Liaunig, in Neuhaus, Austria, opened its new building expansion with Sean Scully: Painting as an Imaginative World Appropriation. To honour his long-term friendship with art critic who died in 2013, Scully published the book Danto on Scully, bringing together the series of five essays Danto had written on the artist over the previous 20 years.

(2025). 9783775739634, Dap-distributed Art. .

In 2015 Scully completed his restoration of the 10th Church of Santa Cecília de Montserrat in Spain, and opened it to the public. Commissioned by the Museum of Montserrat to make a holistic artistic intervention in the sacred space, Scully not only permanently installed paintings but worked on site-specific frescoes, and the design of the altar and cross. The chapel is now both a working church, and also the Espai d’Art Sean Scully. Scully was awarded the V Congreso Asociacion Protecturi for his contribution to Spanish religious heritage In 2016 Scully's second major exhibition in China, Sean Scully: Resistance and Persistence, opened at the Art Museum of the Nanjing University of the Arts, and travelled to the and the in Wuhan. In the same year, as well as solo museum exhibitions in České Budějovice, Czech Republic, and , Spain, the artist put together two exhibitions of works from specific early periods in his private collection, one of works from the 1970s, in an off-site space in Ridgewood, Queens with Cheim & Read, and another of works from the 1980s with Mnuchin Gallery. Inspired by revisiting his earlier works, Scully began to reemploy techniques such as spray painting, which he first introduced in the late 1960s.

Over the course of 2015–2017, Scully's work expanded in two particular directions: sculpture and figuration. During this period, Scully began working on sculptural projects, including the Tower series using various materials such as , marble, and stainless steel, and the Stack series in both raw and painted steel were introduced. A new series of Block paintings was begun, in which Scully self-referenced his sculpture in paint. This new direction was the focus of the solo exhibition Wall of Light Cubed at Cheim & Read, NY. Scully also revisited his early exploration in figuration from the late 1960s in a series of figurative paintings titled Eleuthera which was completed between 2015 and 2017. The series was inspired by Scully's son Oisin, and was named after the island of in the Bahamas and the feminine Greek adjective ( eleútheros), meaning "free".


2018
2018 saw Scully have a total of fourteen public exhibitions around the world. This included the installation of the monumental sculpture Boxes of Air in the Cuadra San Cristóbal, in Mexico City, along with paintings installed in the horse stalls of the iconic pink stable block. Other museum shows included: Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow; Hatton and Laing Galleries, Newcastle, UK; De Pont Museum of Contemporary Art, Tilburg, Netherlands; Russian Museum, St Petersburg, Russia; Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, Germany; Yorkshire Sculpture Park, UK, among many others. In 2019, the exhibition Sean Scully: Sea Star opened at The National Gallery, London, showcasing Scully's work alongside works by J. M. W. Turner. On 6 April 2019, director 's documentary film Unstoppable. Sean Scully & The Art of Everything aired nationally in the UK on . For the 58th Venice Biennale, Scully presented Sean Scully: Human at the Basilica of San Giorgio Maggiore, an exhibition of recent paintings and a new sculpture titled Opulent Ascension under the dome of the late Renaissance church by Andrea Palladio.


Critical reception
wrote that “Sean Scully’s name belongs on the shortest of short lists of the major painters of our time”,
(2025). 9780231545723, Columbia University Press.
continuing that “Scully’s historical importance lies in the way he has brought the great achievement of Abstract Expressionist painting into the contemporary moment - and in a way overcome the terms of the paragon that sent painting into exile.”
(2025). 9780231545723, Columbia University Press.


Prizes and awards
Scully has been a member of Aosdána since 2001, and the Royal Academy of Arts since 2013. Scully received an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from both Massachusetts College of Art and the National University of Ireland in 2003, and a Doctor of Letters degree from Newcastle University. He received an Honorary Doctorate from Miguel Hernández University in 2006 and 2008.
+List of awards and prizes, including year, association, and result !Year !Award !Result
1970Peter Stuyvesant Foundation Prize
1972John Moores Painting Prize2nd place prize
1974John Moores Painting Prize4th place prize
1975Harkness Fellowship
1983National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowship
1989
1993
2000Honorary Fellow of the London Institute of Arts & Letters
2015V Congreso Asociacion Protecturi
2016GAC Honorary Award
Harper's Bazaar International Artist of the Year Award


Other works

Music
Scully's mother Holly was a singer, and Scully became heavily influenced by rhythm and blues in his adolescence. Scully owned and ran an R&B club as a teenager in South London, and was briefly in an R&B band with his brother and a friend.
(2014). 9781137342577, Springer. .

In 2016 the percussionist Billy Martin from the band Medeski Martin & Wood made a performative collaboration with Sean Scully's monumental corten steel sculpture Boxes of Air at Scully's Tappan studio. It culminated in ‘Boxing for Sean’, a 6 movement percussion composition performed live outdoors.

In 2019 the duo Merzouga released a 46-minute sound composition, "The Language of Light - Music to the Work of Sean Scully" (YLE/DLF 2019) featuring the texts and the voice of Scully. Its premiere broadcast was on 3 December 2019 at 9pm local time on Finnish broadcaster . German nationwide broadcaster co-produced the piece; the German broadcast was scheduled for February 2020.


Writing
Scully first began writing about art and his own work in the 1980s, although he only truly began to include writing as part of his practice from 1996 onwards. 2016 saw the publication of Inner: the collected writings and selected interviews of Sean Scully, by HatjeCantz.


Personal life
Scully became a father at the age of 19, with the birth of his son Paul on 7 May 1965. Paul later died in a car accident in 1983 at the age of 18. While at Newcastle University, Scully met Rosemary Purnell, a fellow student in the Painting Department, they married in 1971 and later divorced. Scully married artist Catherine Lee in 1978, the two divorced in 1998. In 2006, he married artist , his fourth wife. Their son Oisin Scully was born in 2009.


Public collections

United States and South America
  • Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, NC
  • Albright–Knox Art Gallery – Buffalo, NY
  • Art Institute of Chicago – Chicago, IL
  • Art Gallery of Ontario – Ontario, Canada
  • The Broad Art Foundation – Los Angeles, CA
  • Carnegie Museum of Art – Pittsburgh, PA
  • Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts, Stanford University – Stanford, CA
  • Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts – Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
  • Centro Cultural de Arte Contemporaneo – Mexico City, Mexico
  • Chase Manhattan Bank – New York, NY
  • Chemical Bank – New York, NY
  • Cincinnati Art Museum – Cincinnati, OH
  • Cleveland Museum of Art – Cleveland, OH
  • Contemporary Museum – Honolulu, HI
  • Corcoran Gallery of Art – Washington, D.C.
  • Dallas Museum of Art – Dallas, TX
  • David Winton Bell Gallery, List Art Center, Brown University, Providence, RI
  • Denver Art Museum – Denver, CO
  • Des Moines Art Center – Des Moines, IA
  • De Young Museum – San Francisco, CA
  • First Bank Minneapolis – Minneapolis, MN
  • Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University – Cambridge, MA
  • Ft. Lauderdale Museum of Art – Ft. Lauderdale, FL
  • – Potomac, MD
  • Guggenheim Museum – New York, NY
  • Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden – Washington, D.C.
  • High Museum of Art – Atlanta, GA
  • Hood Museum of Art – Hanover, NH
  • Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art – Kansas City, MO
  • Los Angeles County Museum of Art – Los Angeles, CA
  • Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth – Fort Worth, TX
  • BNY Mellon Center – Pittsburgh, PA
  • Metropolitan Museum of Art – New York, NY
  • Miami Art Museum – Miami, FL
  • Mount Holyoke College Art Museum – South Hadley, MA
  • Museo de Arte Contemporaneo – Caracas, Venezuela
  • Museo de Arte Contemporaneo – Monterrey, Mexico
  • Museo de Arte Moderno – Col. Bosques de Chapultepec, Mexico
  • Museo de Arte Moderno – Mexico City, Mexico
  • Museum of Fine Art, Boston – Boston MA
  • Museum of Fine Arts, Houston – Houston, TX
  • Museum of Modern Art – New York, NY
  • National Gallery of Art – Washington, D.C.
  • Orlando Museum of Art – Orlando, FL
  • Paine Webber Group, Inc. – New York, NY
  • Philip Morris, Inc. – New York, NY
  • The Phillips Collection - Washington, D.C.
  • Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ
  • Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA
  • Santa Barbara Museum of Art – Santa Barbara, CA
  • Seattle Museum of Art – Seattle, WA
  • Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery and Sculpture Garden, University of Nebraska – Lincoln, NE
  • Smith College Museum of Art – Northampton, MA
  • Smithsonian American Art Museum – Washington, DC
  • Raclin Murphy Museum of Art – Notre Dame, IN
  • San Diego Museum of Art – San Diego, CA
  • Saint Louis Art Museum – Saint Louis, MO
  • Speed Art Museum — Louisville, KY
  • Van Cliburn Foundation, Fort Worth, TX
  • Walker Art Center – Minneapolis, MN
  • Whitney Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
  • Yale University Art Gallery – New Haven, CT


Europe
  • Abbot Hall Art Gallery – Kendal, England
  • Academy of Fine Arts, Munich – Munich, Germany
  • – Vienna, Austria
  • Arts Council of Great Britain – London, England
  • AXA Belgique – Brussels, Belgium
  • Banque Européenne d'Investissement – Luxembourg
  • – Vienna, Austria
  • Bavarian State Painting Collections – Munich, Germany
  • Bibliothèque nationale de France – Paris, France
  • Birmingham Museum of Art – Birmingham, England
  • – London, England
  • Centre national des arts plastiques – Paris, France
  • Ceolfrith Art Center – Sunderland, England
  • Château Lynch-Bages – Pauillac, France
  • Museo Chillida-Leku, – Hernani, Spain
  • Coleccion Conei, Barcelona, Spain
  • Consejería de cultura – Santander, Spain
  • Contemporary Arts Society – London, England
  • Council of National Academic Awards – London, England
  • Crawford Art Gallery – Cork, Ireland
    • East Coast Light I (1973)
  • Centre de la gravure et de l'image imprimee, La Louvière – Brussels, Belgium
  • Daimler Art Collection – Stuttgart, Germany
  • Deutsche Bank – London, UK
  • DZ Bank AG Kunst sammlung / KMMM – Frankfurt, Germany
  • Eastern Arts Association – Cambridge, England
  • Ecole d’Arts Plastiques – Châtellerault, France
  • Espace de l’Art Concret – Mouans-Sartoux, France
  • EMMA, ESPOO, Museum of Modern Art – Helsinki, Finland
  • Fitzwilliam Museum – Cambridge, England
  • La Fondation Edelman – Lausanne, Switzerland
  • Fondation Urvasco – Vittoria, Spain
  • Foundation Stiftelsen Focus – Borås, Sweden
  • CaixaForum Barcelona – Barcelona, Spain
  • Fundació Allorda-Derksen – Barcelona, Spain
  • Fundación Caixa Galicia - La Coruña, Spain
  • Gallery of Modern Art László Vass Collection – Veszprém, Hungary
  • Gertsev Collection – Moscow, Russia
  • Hôtel des Arts - Toulon, France
  • Hunterian Art Gallery – Glasgow, Scotland
  • Hugh Lane Gallery – Dublin, Ireland
  • Institut Valencià d'Art Modern (IVAM) – Valencia, Spain
  • Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) – Dublin, Ireland
  • Kunsthalle Bielefeld – Bielefeld, Germany
  • Kunstmuseum Lentos Linz – Linz, Austria
  • Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen – Düsseldorf, Germany
  • Kunsthaus Zürich – Zürich, Switzerland
  • Kunst und Museumsverein Wuppertal – Wuppertal, Germany
  • Laing Art Gallery – Newcastle, England
  • László Vass Collection – Veszprém, Hungary
  • Leicestershire Educational Authority – Leicester, England
  • Louisiana Museum of Modern Art – Humlebaek, Denmark
  • The Maramotti Collection – Reggio Emilia, Italy
  • Manchester Art Gallery – Manchester, England
  • – Essen, Germany
  • Musée d'Art Contemporain du Val-de-Marne – Vitry-sur-Seine, France
  • Musée d'art moderne (Saint-Étienne) – Saint-Étienne, France
  • Musee du Dessin et de l'Estampe Originale – Gravelines, France
  • Musée Jenisch – Vevey, Switzerland
  • Musee National d´Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou – Paris, France
  • Musee de Roland-Garros – Paris, France
  • Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna (MAMBO) – Bologna, Italy
  • Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía – Madrid, Spain
  • Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art – Barcelona, Spain
  • , Stiftung Ludwig – Vienna, Austria
  • Museum Pfalzgalerie – Kaiserslautern, Germany
  • National Museum Cardiff – Cardiff, Wales
  • Northern Arts Association – Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, England
  • – Norwich, England
  • Open Museum, Environmental & Heritage Resource Centre, Leicestershire, England
  • Pier Arts Centre – Orkney, Scotland
  • Ruhr University Bochum – Bochum, Germany
  • Saastamoisen Saatio – Helsinki, Finland
  • Sala Rekalde – Bilbao, Spain
  • Sammlung Essl – Vienna, Austria
  • Sara Hilden Art Museum – Tampere, Finland
  • Staatsgalerie Stuttgart – Stuggart, Germany
  • Staatliche Museen Kassel, Neue Galerie – Kassel, Germany
  • Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München, Munich, Germany
  • – Munich, Germany
  • – London, England
  • The UBS Art Collection – Zürich/Basel, Switzerland
  • , Northern Ireland
  • Northumbria University – Newcastle, England
  • Victoria and Albert Museum – London, England
  • Von der Heydt Museum – Wuppertal, Germany
  • Whitworth Art Gallery – Manchester, England
  • Willy Michel Collection, Museum Franz Gertsch – Burgdorf, Switzerland
  • ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe (ZKM) – Karlsruhe, Germany
  • University of Limerick – Limmerick, Ireland


Australia
  • Art Gallery of New South Wales – Sydney, Australia
  • National Gallery of Australia – Canberra, Australia
  • National Gallery of Victoria – Felton Bequest – Melbourne, Australia
  • Power Institute of Contemporary Art – Sydney, Australia


Japan
  • Bridgestone Museum of Art, Ishibashi Foundation – Tokyo
  • Nagoya City Art Museum – Nagoya
  • Tokyo International Forum – Tokyo


Bibliography

Selected works about Scully
+List of works about Sean Scully showing year and language of publication, and publisher !Year !Title !Author !Publisher
1990Sean Scully
  • English
Maurice PoirierHudson Hills Press
1991Sean Scully: Prints from the Garner Tullis Workshop
  • English
Garner Tullis
2004Sean Scully
  • English
Thames and Hudson
The Color of Time. The Photographs of Sean Scully
  • English
Mila Finemane

Edward Lucie-Smith

Steidl
2006Sean Scully
  • French
Philippe MonselÉditions Cercle D’Art
2007Sean Scully
  • Spanish
Pilar Escanerode MiguelThames and Hudson
Glorious Dust
  • English
Steidl
2009Kunstwerkstatt Sean Scully
  • German
Helmut FriedelPrestel Verlag
2015Danto on Scully
  • English
Daniel Herwitz and HatjeCantzVerlag/Cheim and Read
2017Painting Earns Its Stripes’ and other essays
  • English/Chinese
Shanghai Fine Arts Publisher


Selected works by Sean Scully
+List of works by Sean Scully showing year and language of publication, co-authors, and publisher !Year !Title !Co-author(s) !Publisher
1998Mark Rothko: Corps de Lumière
  • French
  • 31 pages
L’Échoppe
2006Sean Scully: Resistance and Persistence: Selected Writings
  • English
Florence InglebyMerrell Publishers
2007Sean Scully: Walls of Aran
  • English
Colm TóibínThames and Hudson
Sean Scully: Cuerpos de luz/Bodies of Light
  • English/Spanish
Fundación Juan March
2008Sean Scully: La surface peinte
  • French
Daniel Lelong Éditeur
2016Inner: The Collected Writings and Selected Interviews of Sean Scully
  • English
Hatje Cantz Verlag
2019Sean Scully: Walls of Aran, Compact Edition
  • English
Colm TóibínThames and Hudson


Solo and two-person exhibition catalogues
1975Sean Scully. Paintings 1974La Tortue Gallery, Santa Monica
1981Joseph Masheck, Sam HunterSean Scully. Paintings 1971-1981, Birmingham
1985John Caldwell, , Amy LighthillSean ScullyMuseum of Art, Carnegie Institute
1986Joseph MasheckSean Scully. Paintings 1985-1986David McKee Gallery
1987Pamela AuchinclossSean Scully. Monotypes from the Garner Tullis WorkshopPamela Auchincloss Gallery, New York
Mari RantanenSean Scully/Harvey QuaytmanHelsinki Festival, Helsinki
Susanne LambrechtSean ScullyGalerie Schmela/Mayor Rowan Gallery, Düsseldorf/London
1988Neil BenezraSean ScullyArt Institute of Chicago, Chicago
John LougherySean ScullyFuji Television Gallery, Tokyo
1989 Sean Scully. Paintings 1987-1988David McKee Gallery, New York
Sean Scully. Paintings and Works on Paper 1982-88Whitechapel Gallery, London
1990 Sean Scully. Paintings 1989-1990David McKee Gallery, New York
Sean Scully. Monotypes from the Garner Tullis Workshop
Sean ScullyGalerie De France, Paris
Sean Scully/Donald Sultan: Abstraction/RepresentationStanford University Museum of Art, Stanford
1991Sean ScullyJamileh Weber Gallery, Zurich
1992 Sean Scully. WoodcutsGarner Tullis, New York
Paul BonaventuraSean ScullyWaddington Custot, London
1993, , Steven Henry MadoffSean Scully. The Catherine PaintingsModern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth
Armin ZweiteSean Scully. Paintings and Works on PaperGalerie Bernd Klüser, Munich
1994Demetrio PaparoniSean Scully. The light in the darknessFuji Television Gallery, Tokyo
Francisco JarautaSean Scully. Obragráfica 1991-1994Galeria DV, San Sebastian
1995Jean FrémonSean Scully. “Place.”, Paris
Hans-Michael HerzongSean Scully. The Catherine PaintingsKunsthalle Bielefeld, Bielefeld
Enrique JuncosaSean ScullyWaddington Galleries, London
Ned Rifkin, Victoria Combalia, , Armin ZweiteSean Scully. Twenty Years, 1976-1995High Museum of Art, Atlanta
Ned RifkinSean Scully. Twenty Years, 1976-1995Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC
Bernd Klüser and Sean ScullySean Scully. The Beauty of the RealGallerie Bernd Klüser, Munich
1996Hans-Michael HerzogSean Scully. “Catherine Paintings” aquarellesCasino Luxembourg, Luxembourg
Victoria Combalia and Engrique JuncosaSean ScullyGalleria Carles Taché, Barcelona
Demetrio Paparoni, Sean ScullySean Scully. Obra Gràfica RecentGaleria D’art, Barcelona
, , Hans-Michael HerzogSean ScullyGalleria d'Arte Moderna, Milan/Charta, Bologna/Milan:
Jean-Louis Schefer, Xavier Girard, Sean ScullyGalerie nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris
Ned Rifkin, Victoria Combalia, Lynne Cooke, Armin ZweiteSean Scully. Vintanys, 1976-1995Fundació la Caixa, Barcelona
Sean Scully. ZwanzigJahre, 1976-1995Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt
Michael Semff, , and Mario-Andreas von LüttichauSean Scully. Works on PaperStaatliche Graphische Sammlung München, Munich
1997Mark Glazebrook and Irving SandlerSean Scully. PaintingsManchester Art Gallery, Manchester
Armin ZweiteSean ScullyGaleria DV, San Sebastian
Francisco Jarauta, , Jean-Louis ScheferSean ScullySala de Exposiciones REKALDE, Bilbao
Jean FrémonSean ScullyGalerie Lelong, Paris
1998Francisco JarautaSean ScullyGalería Antonia Puyó, Zaragoza
Jean FrémonÉchiquier du rêveL’Échoppe, Paris
Jérôme SansLawrence Carroll and Sean Scully.Lawing Gallery, Houston
Sean ScullyGalerie Bernd Klüser, Munich
Helmut Friedel, Hans-Michael HerzogSean Scully, Vienna
Sean ScullyGalerie Haas and Fuchs, Berlin
1999Edward Lucie-Smith, Hans-Michael HerzogSean ScullySouth London Gallery, London
Sean ScullyGalerie Lelong, Paris
, Hans-Michael HerzogSean Scully. New Paintings and Works on PaperDanese/Galerie Lelong, New York
Sean Scully, Federico García Lorca, Bernd KlüserSean Scully. Barcelona Paintings and Recent EditionsGalerie Bernd Klüser, Munich
Sean Scully, Dublin
Victoria Martino, Julia KlüserSean Scully. Prints: Catalogue Raisonné 1968-1999Galerie Lelong/Galerie Bernd Klüser, Munich
2000Francisco JarautaSean ScullyGaleria Carles Taché, Barcelona
Julia KlüserSean Scully. Estampes 1983-1999Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen, Caen
2001Sean ScullySean Scully. Cuaderno de ArtistaMatador, Madrid
Daniel AbadieSean Scully. Light to DarkGalerie Lelong, Paris
Armin Zweite, Bernd Klüser, Francisco Jaraunta, Hans-Michael Herzog, Maria MüllerSean Scully. Paintings Pastels Watercolors Photographs 1990-2000Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf
Karin HennigSean ScullyKünstler, München
Sean Scully. Light and GravityKnoedler and Company, New York
Sean ScullyComing and Going: A KataFilm Study Center, Harvard University, Cambridge
Michael AupingSean Scully. Wall of Light/Muro de LuzMuseo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey
2002Armin ZweiteSean Scully: Óleos Pasteles Acuarelas FotografíasInstitut Valencià d'Art Modern, Valencia:
Ronaldo BritoSean Scully. Wall of LightCentro de Arte Hélio Oiticica, Rio de Janeiro
Fernando FrancésSean ScullyCámera De Comercio De Cantabria, Santander
Ulrich BischoffSean Scully zu Gast in der Galerie Neue MeisterGalerie Neue Mesiter, Dresden
2003Maria Lluïsa Borràs i GonzàlezSean ScullyGaleria Carles Taché, Barcelona
Sean Scully: Wall of Light, FiguresTimothy Taylor Gallery, London
Gilles Altieri, Pierre Wat, Francisco Jarauta, Hans-Michael HerzogSean ScullyHôtel des Arts, Toulon
Timo Vuorikoski, , Jürgen HabermasSean ScullySara Hildén Art Husem, Tampere
2004Sean Scully. Winter RobeGalerie Lelong, Paris
Florian Steinberg, Wilhelm Christoph WarningSean Scully and John GroomGalerie 422, Gmunden
M. J. BalsachSean Scully. Dedicado a Federico García LorcaCasa, Museo Federico García Lorca, Granada
Brian Kennedy, Jörg Hutter, Timo Vuorikoski, , Jürgen Habermas, , Liliane Tomasko, Shaune A. LakinSean Scully. Body of LightNational Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Enrique Juncosa, Jürgen Habermas, Tigresen el jardín/Tigers in the gardenCentro José Guerrero, Granada
2005Sean ScullySean ScullyIngleby Gallery, Edinburgh
Sean Scully. Paintings and Works on PaperAbbot Hall Art Gallery/, Kendal
Stephen Bennett Phillips, Michael Auping, Anne L. StraussSean Scully. Wall of LightThe Phillips Collection, Rizzoli/Washington DC/New York
Victoria Combalia, Lowery Stokes SimsSean Scully. Para García LorcaSala de Exposiciones Acala 31, Madrid
Marianne Heinz, Liliane TomaskoSean Scully. Malerie: kleine FormateStaatliche Museen, Kassel
Mia FinemanSean Scully. FotografíasGaleria Carles Taché, Barcelona
2006Sean Scully. Recent PaintingsL.A. Louver, Venice
Uwe WieczorekSean Scully. Die Architektur der Farbe/The Architecture of ColorKunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vaduz
Sean ScullyTimothy Taylor Gallery, London
2007, Lorand Hegyi, Maria Lluïsa Borràs i Gonzàlez, Sean Scully: A retrospectiveFundació Joan Miró, Barcelona/Thames and Hudson, London
2008Sean Scully. La surface peinteGalerie Lelong, Paris
Brian KennedySean Scully. The Art of the StripeHood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover
Sean Scully, Brian KennedySean Scully. The Art of the Stripe. Exhibition Guide
Looking at Sean Scully's Paintings.
2009Susanne Kleine, Walter SmerlingSean Scully. Konstantinopleoder Die versteckteSinnlichkeit. Die Bilderwelt von Sean ScullyMuseum Küppersmühle, Munich
Paul KöserSean ScullyMuseum Küppersmühle, Duisburg
László Hegyeshalmi, Walter Storms, Helmut FriedelSean Scully. Emotion and StructureHouse of Fine Arts/Modern Gallery- László Vass Collection/Walter Storms Gallery, Veszprém/Munich
Tiffany BellSean ScullyEdizioni Charta, Milan
Hans-Michael Herzog, , Sean Scully, Florian SteiningerSean ScullyGalerie Carles Taché, S. L., Barcelona
2010Tanja Pirsig-Marshall, Arthur C. Danto and Armin ZweiteSean Scully Works from the 1980sVISUAL Centre for Contemporary Art and the George Bernard Shaw Theater, Carlow/Leeds Art Gallery
Richard InglebySean Scully IonaIngleby Gallery, Edinburgh
David CohenSean ScullyTimothy Taylor Gallery, London
Hans Albrecht Lusznat, Björn KurtSean Scully: Art Comes from NeedSisyphos Film München, München:DVD/90 min.
2011Reinhard Spieler, Tanja Pirsig-Marshall, , Armin ZweiteSean Scully Werkeaus den 1980er JahrenWilhelm-Hack-Museum, Ludwigshafen
Lenore D. Miller, Stephen Bennett PhillipsSean Scully: Works on PaperLuther W. Brady Art Gallery, George Washington University, Washington DC
Sean Scully: Paintings and Watercolors.Chazen Museum of Art, Madison
Sean Scully, Tin Mal/Cut Ground, Dublin
2012Joanna Kleinberg, Brett LittmanSean Scully: Change and Horizontals, New York
Matthais Frehner, Annick Haldemann, Brigitte ReutnerSean Scully. Grey Wolf-RetrospektiveMuseum of Fine Arts, Bern
, , Ben Luke, and Sean ScullySean Scully: DoricOliver Wood, London
Kosme de Barañano, Sean Scully: Light of the SouthTF Editores, Madrid
Lóránd Hegyi, Eunmi LeeSean Scully: The Evocative Capacity of PaintingWooson Gallery, Daegu
2013 Sean ScullyThe Verey Gallery, , Windsor
Andrea LeventisSean Scully: Works from the 70sTimothy Taylor Gallery, London
Joanna Kleinberg, Brett Littman, Colm Tóibín, Peter Benson Miller, Maria Giuseppina Di MonteChange and HorizontalsGalleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome
Sean Scully, Gregory Perry, Simon MartinTriptychs. Sean ScullyPallant House Gallery, Chichester
Sean Scully. Night and DayCheim & Read
2014Jean Frémon, , Christos ParidisSean Scully. DoricGalerie Lelong, Paris
Christopher Lewis, , Jacqueline ThalmannSean Scully Encounters: A New Master among Old MastersChrist Church Picture Gallery, Oxford
, Richard WilliamsSean Scully: Kind of RedTimothy Taylor Gallery, London
Sean Scully, Beate Reifenscheid, Marc O’SullivanSean Scully. Figure/Abstract, Berlin
Sean Scully, Philip Dodd, Ding Yi, , , Jürgen Habermas, Follow the Heart. The Art of Sean Scully: 1964-2014Shanghai Himalayas Museum/CAFA Art Museum, Beijing
Sean ScullySean Scully. China Piled Up. Sculpture SpecTimothy Taylor Gallery, London
2015Jacopa Crivelli Viscont, Philip Dodd, Sean ScullySean Scully: 1974-2015Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo
Sean Scully, , , Ben Luke, Hans-Ulrich ObristSean Scully Land Sea, Italy
Sean Scully: HOME, Dublin
, , Sean ScullyNational Gallery of Ireland, Dublin
, , Reinhard Spieler, Sean ScullySean Scully: Bricklayer of the SoulHatje Cantz Verlag, Germany
Peter BaumSean Scully. MalereialsWeltaneignungMuseum Liauning, Neuhaus, Austria
Sean Scully Different PlacesChâteau La Coste, , Dublin
2016Sean Scully, Philip DoddSean Scully: Resistance and Persistence- Paintings 1967-2015 London and New YorkNanjing University of the Arts/Guangdong Museum of Art/Hubei Museum of Art
Javier MolinsScully and TomaskoFundación Bancaja, Spain
Robert Mnuchin, Sukanya Rajaratnam, Michael McGinnissSean Scully. The EightiesMnuchin Gallery, New York
Daniel AbaideSean Scully. MetalGalerie Lelong, Paris
Timothy TaylorSean Scully. HorizonMusumeci S. p. A., Italy
2017Sean Scully, Liliane Tomasko, Florian Steininger, Valeria Waibelbeide|both: Sean Scully and Liliane Tomasko.Kustwerk Sammlung Klein, Germany
John Cheim, Pac Pobric, Elle RobinsonSean ScullyCheim & Read
Josep M Soler, Mercè Conesa, Francesc Xavier Altés I Aguiló, Eduard Sánchez, Xavier Guitart Tarrés, Albert Mercadé, Daniel Giralt-MiracleSanta Cecília de Montserrat. Del Segle X A Sean ScullyPublicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, Barcelona
, Evgenia Petrova, Sean Scully. Facing East, St. Petersburg
2018Sean Scully, , Daniel Garza-Usabiaga, Sean Scully, San CristóbalOscar Humphries, San Cristóbal
Sukanya RajaratnamSean Scully. Wall of LightMnuchin Gallery, New York
Sean Scully, , Edward Lucie-Smith, , Robert C. MorganSean Scully. 1970Laing Art Gallery and Hatton Gallery/Walker Art Gallery
Kirsten Claudia Voigt, Tanja Pirsig-MarshallSean Scully Vita DuplexStaatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe/Museum für Kunst und Kultur, Münster
Alfredo Cramerotti, Sean ScullyStanding on the Edge of the World: Sean ScullyHong Kong Arts Centre, Hong Kong
Sinéad MorrisseyCrossings: Poets respond to the Art of Sean ScullyNewcastle Centre for the Literary Arts, Newcastle University
, , Sean Scully: Landlines and other recent works,De Pont Museum of Contemporary Art,
, Patricia Hickson, , Stéphane AquinSean Scully: LandlineHirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Books
, Alexander Borovsky, Ben LukeSean Scully: Uninsideout, London
Marla PriceSean Scully: Catalogue Raisonée of the Paintings, Volume II, 1980-1989Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in association with Hatje Cantz
2019Justus Kewenig, Jon Wood, Kirsten Voigt, Sean Scully, Clare Lilley, Peter MurraySean Scully. SculptureHatjeCantz
Carmelo Grasso, Norberto Villa, , Javier MolinsSean Scully. HumanAbazzia di San Giorgio Maggiore, Skira
Klaus Albrecht Schröder, , Sean Scully, Elizabeth Dutz, Sean Scully: Eleuthera/Kerber Art Verlag
Anna Bernardini, , Marta SpanevelloSean Scully: Long LightFAI Villa Panza, Magonza
Daniel F. Herrmann, Sean Scully at the National Gallery: Sea StarNational Gallery Company, London
Alcalde de Malaga, Helena Juncosa, Sean Scully, Sean Scully: EleutheraCentro de Arte Contemporaneo de Malaga


Quotes
  • “Art, especially abstraction: has to be a moral act. If not it’s likely to fall into bed with decoration.”
    (2025). 9783775741644, Hatje Cantz.
  • “Why stripes? Because they can be anything. And they can be anything because they are nothing. To make nothing into something is more interesting that making something into something else. The association with the devil notwithstanding”
    (2025). 9783775741644
  • “Artistic culture, to me, is like a huge rug that is constantly folded and unfolded by us. Every time it’s turned over, turned out, unfolded: it shows something new or something overlooked that now seems new.”
    (2025). 9783775741644


Sources
  • Dorothy Walker (2002). Scully, Seán in Brian Lalor (Ed.), The Encyclopedia of Ireland. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan. .
  • Arthur C. Danto (2007). "Architectural Principles in the Art of Sean Scully", Border Crossings: A Magazine of the Arts, vol. 26(3), August 2007, p. 62–67. ISSN 0831-2559.
  • Arthur C. Danto. (2005). "Sean Scully". Unnatural Wonders: Essays from the Gap Between Art and Life. NY: Columbia University Press. p. 81. .
  • (2011). "Sean Scully". Grove Encyclopedia of American Art. Oxford University Press. .
  • (1994). The Aesthete in the : The Philosophy and Practice of American Abstract Painting in the 1980s. Penn State Press. 1994. .
  • (2010). "Sacred Sadness: Sean Scully's Abstractions", Psychodrama: Modern Art as Group Therapy. London: Ziggurat. pp. 449–453. .
  • David Carrier (2008). A World Art History and Its Objects. Penn State Press. 2008. .
  • Sean Scully (2016). Inner: The Collected Writings and Selected Interviews of Sean Scully. .


External links

Page 1 of 1
1
Page 1 of 1
1

Account

Social:
Pages:  ..   .. 
Items:  .. 

Navigation

General: Atom Feed Atom Feed  .. 
Help:  ..   .. 
Category:  ..   .. 
Media:  ..   .. 
Posts:  ..   ..   .. 

Statistics

Page:  .. 
Summary:  .. 
1 Tags
10/10 Page Rank
5 Page Refs
2s Time