Sean Scully

SEAN SCULLY (Dublin, 1945).
"Raval II". 1996.
Etching and aquatint engraving on paper, copy 9/24.
Signed, justified and titled.
Measurements: 29 x 27,5 cm.(print); 56 x 75 cm.(paper); 63,5 x 82 cm.(frame).

Sean Scully's abstraction was based on the exploration of an essential and dynamic geometry. This is seen in this print: the alternation of black stripes and black and white squares creates a rhythmic and balanced composition. Geometric forms are not static in Sean Scully's work. Instead, they seem to interact with each other, generating a visual dialogue full of tension and movement. The choice of black and white emphasizes the purity of the forms and allows the viewer to focus on the tonal hallmarks and structure of the composition. This also gives the work a sense of timelessness and sobriety.

Scully is conceived as one of the giants of contemporary art. He studied at Croydon College of Art and the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. He received a scholarship to Harvard University in the early 1970s and has since settled in New York. From the beginning of his career, Sean Scully has worked from geometry, in a line that links the tradition of Piet Mondrian's cold abstraction and Mark Rothko's color field painting. In the eighties, Scully incorporates into his compositions different pieces that he paints independently, which reinforces the spatial tension of his characteristic structure of vertical and horizontal bands; in this way he plays with the trompe l'oeil that provokes the sensation of moving forward and backward in parts of the work, enhanced by the variation of the colors. The handling of color is essential in the evolution of Scully's work, who dispenses with acrylic to use oil, which offers greater expressive power. His method is based on the application of successive wet layers of paint, so that the color changes according to the drying time of each layer; thus, the result achieved through each pigment is always unexpected. The reference to the artist's vital universe characterizes Scully's work, something that is reflected in the titles that sometimes reveal the starting point of the creative process of a poetics that links reason and emotion. Scully was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1989 and 1993. He has exhibited widely throughout Europe and the United States, with a presence in some of the world's most important museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the National Gallery of Art, and the Smithsonian, among many others.2 Scully currently lives and works between New York, Barcelona, and Munich, where he served as a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts. In 2015 he inaugurated the Espai d'Art Sean Scully, a permanent installation in the chapel of the Monastery of Santa Cecília de la Montserrat Mountain.