Author(s): Danilo Eccher

Artists & Styles

Born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1945, Sean Scully has gained international prominence as one of the most admired contemporary abstract painters today. 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 paint. From his precisely gridded works of the 1970s to the three-dimensional panels of the 1980s and his now celebrated Wall of Light paintings from the 1990s, this volume gathers the entire oeuvre of the artist, whose work is held in numerous public collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The National Gallery of Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth; and the Tate, London. Elected a Royal Academician in 2013, Scully has been shortlisted for the Turner Prize twice, in 1989 and in 1993. He lives and works in New York, Barcelona, and Munich.