Sean Scully

Sean Scully (* June 30, 1945 in Dublin, Ireland) is an Irish painter who grew up from the age of four years in the UK and in 1983 took on American citizenship. He lives and works in King Village, Barcelona and New York.

  • 2.1 solo exhibitions in German-speaking (selection)
  • 2.2 Public art collections
  • 2.3 Catalogs

Life

Childhood and youth

1949 the family moved Scully for economic reasons from Dublin to London. There the young Sean Scully grew up in a working class neighborhood in South London and attended the local convent schools. The paintings in the Catholic churches of the district deeply impressed him, so that he will be the first time decided painter at the age of 9 years. However, the way there turned out to be not always easy. As a teenager, his main interest swung first to the American rhythm and blues music over and he ran briefly own music club.

From 1960 to 1962 he trained as a printer and worked in a graphic design studio. However, he never lost this painting quite out of sight and took 3 years, attend evening classes at the Central School of Art in London, where he mainly devoted to figurative painting.

In 1964 he saw at London's Tate Gallery, the painting of a chair by Vincent van Gogh, whose expression of deep sincerity touched him and his decision to become a painter, strengthens again.

Soon after, he started in 1965 his studies at Croydon College of Art, London. There, he was initially interested in Van Gogh, Emil Nolde, Karl Schmidt- Rottluff and Henri Matisse, until he discovered the abstract expressionism and Mark Rothko. This was a turning point in his early career is, because from then on he left the field of figurative painting and made abstract works. These usually consist of intersecting lines and color bands, which result in a complicated grid system. The influence of Op Art is not to be overlooked in this phase.

The 70s and 80s

1968 Sean Scully went to Newcastle upon Tyne in the north of England, where he studied at the Newcastle University Art until 1972. There he was one of the few students who ever still employed in painting, because the concept art (and new media) had at that time boom. But he remained true to the painting.

When he finally 1972, the John Knox Fellowship received and went for the first time for a year in the U.S., he began to experiment and use tape, so precise at the edges of bands of color and hard edges arise with new painting techniques but the images take any expressivity. This type of painting is also known under the term hard-edge painting.

Soon after his return to England in 1973 he had his first solo exhibition at London's Rowan Gallery, which was completely sold out. But he remained only two years into his old home, and 1975 when he got the Harkness Fellowship, he moved entirely to New York. There he lived with the painter Catherine Lee, whom he married in 1978.

New York City: the urban canyons consisting of intersecting horizontal and vertical "lines", the industrial buildings and the local light - all that had great influence on the painter. Similarly, the prevailing at that time in the United States art form of minimalism, as well as his friendship with Robert Ryman.

His first solo exhibition in New York had Sean Scully 1977 in Duffy - Gibbs Gallery. In the following years, mostly gray or black, almost monochrome works whose composition is reduced severely and developed. This phase of " Black Paintings " took about five years to gradually color and space returned to the images. Sean Scully hatt feel the need to fill the minimalism and expressiveness. He maintained his stern image structure, but ceased to use adhesive tape so that the edges of the bands of color appear softer and more vibrant. The brushwork is visible on the image surface. By several color layers are superimposed, creates a rich, translucent, iridescent in its nuances of color. At full maturity he brought his new style of painting in the image Heart of Darkness, which now hangs in the Chicago Art Institute.

In 1983 he became an American citizen, but without placing his Irish. Around the same time came his 18- year-old son Paul from Scully's first marriage in a car accident.

1984-1989 can be considered the year of the international breakthrough designate, in 1985, for example, Sean Scully had his first solo exhibition in an American museum, the Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Subsequently, major museums acquired increases his images.

In 1989, following the first solo exhibition in a European museum, at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, from where they continue wandering in the Palacio Velazquez to Madrid and from there eventually into the municipal gallery in the Lenbachhaus, Munich.

The 90

In 1990, the first time were also published photographs of Sean Scully.

In 1994, the painter set up a studio in Barcelona.

1995 was the series of "Floating Paintings". This is three-dimensional picture on aluminum blocks are painted on three sides with vertical bands of color, and are fixed with one narrow side on the wall. The objects are so off at a right angle from the wall and protrude into the room.

In 1997, the first photographs of Sean Scully at the Sala de Exposiciones Rekalde were exhibited in Bilbao.

In 1999 he set up his new studio in New York's Chelsea district.

2000-2010

In 2000, Sean Scully honorary member of the London Institute of Arts and Letters.

In 2001, the Haus der Kunst in Munich was a major retrospective of the work of the painter, the same year he became a member of Aosdána, an Irish artists' association that deals with literature, music and visual arts.

From 2002 to 2007 he was professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and set up a studio in Mooseurach at King village.

2003 Honorary Doctorate in the field of Fine Arts from the Massachusetts College of Art, he was awarded in the United States. In the same year he divorced his second wife, Catherine Lee and soon married the painter Liliane Tomasko.

2005 Sean Scully got a private room at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin.

2004/ 05 he made a great work for the University of Limerick, Ireland, a 3.00 m high, 2.50 m wide and 30.5 m long wall. This consists of two colored stone blocks which are arranged in a checkerboard pattern. The white stone is Portuguese limestone, black basalt Chinese. The sculpture stands at the main entrance to the university campus.

2006 showed the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, a major retrospective of the work of Sean Scully.

2010, the long documentary shown internationally kind comes from need of Hans A. Guttner about Scully was premiered in Santa Rosa. Before Scully had already been the subject of television and short documentaries.

Sean Scully's way of working

When you stand in front of a painting by Sean Scully, one first sees a clear picture structure consisting of various combinations of vertical and horizontal bands of color or square swatches. In some works, there is also an " inset ", ie a canvas that has been individually painted and subsequently inserted into the larger canvas to break with their basic structure, or to enter into communication. A good example of this is the series " Passenger", which originated in the late 90s. The earlier works were also often composed of several singular edited screens of different sizes and depths. The result is a very solid and almost object-like character image. A similar effect also have the "Floating Paintings", which originated in 1995 and 1996. It is massive image carrier made ​​of aluminum, which are between 0.5 cm and 24.5 cm deep and are secured with only a narrow side on the wall, the other three visible sides are painted. The color plays a very important role in Scully's work, as it provides most of the emotionality and high intensity with which the painter is charging his pictures. Often prevail dark colors and earth tones that give the images a touch of melancholy and tragedy. So Sean Scully says in an interview with Hans -Michael Herzog:

"I think there is a lot of melancholy in my pictures. A sense of loss ... the light in my paintings has in some ways a melancholy quality, there is a certain sadness in that light. "

Also very important is the image surface. By Scully color layer superimposes color to layer with clearly visible brush strokes, without the use of adhesive tape, the surface gets tactile quality, the edges of each color surfaces are soft and foreshadow lower layers of paint. The viewer can so clearly see the physical use of the artist and the creative process. This combination of rigid basic structure of image construction and emotional, gesture -based, physical preparation succeeds Sean Scully to combine picturesque tradition from Europe with aesthetic experiences, which have their origin in America, especially in New York. In an interview with Juliana Monachesi in the Folha de São Paulo Sean Scully 's opinion on this topic:

"After the minimalism of abstract painting I wanted to return the emotional and spiritual force that has lost her during the " cool " decade of minimalism. So I have begun in the early 80s so that competing forms and Bezüglichkeiten reintroduce that are painted with feeling. "

In addition to the oil paintings, there are also a variety of etchings, lithographs, pastels and watercolors. These, especially the pastels and watercolors, have the smaller format and the medium of paper a more delicate, intimate character and act more vulnerable than the great works on canvas that can control a large room easily. The watercolor Untitled 09/09/92 from the year 1992, for example, only the format 45.7 x 38 cm.

Other Projects

2004/2005 Sean Scully made ​​a sculpture for the University of Limerick, Ireland. The 30 -meter-long wall is 3 meters high and 2.50 meters wide and consists of arranged in a checkerboard pattern stone blocks. The white stones are Portuguese limestone, black basalt Chinese. The sculpture stands just off the main corridor to the campus.

In 2006, a book authored by Sean Scully book was published with the title Resistance and Persistance: Selected Writings.

Sean Scully's teaching activities

1973, soon after the end of the John Knox Fellowship and his return from the United States, Sean Scully began his first teaching activities at Chelsea College of Art and Design and at Goldsmiths College of Art and Design, London.

1977 to 1983 he taught at Princeton University, New Jersey, USA, in 1975 after he had moved there because of the Harkness Fellowship.

1981-1984 he was a lecturer at the Parsons School of Arts, New York.

1992 Sean Scully invited to hold lectures at Harvard University.

In 1995, he attended a lecture project of the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford University, England, with the title "The Joseph Beuys Lectures" part, which dealt with the state of contemporary art in the UK, Europe and the United States.

2002-2007 Sean Scully took a professorship at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich.

Sean Scully at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich

On the question of Verena Judge of the world on Sunday to Sean Scully why he had accepted a professorship in Munich, he replied in May 2002:

" For two reasons. First, I want to do something special here. Because it is a very important historical moment. But the painting is in question, since the ratio of technological art forms and those forms of art, where you create things with his hands, is tense. I also have a special relationship to Munich, Germany to generally. Here is my art - let's say - understood. And Munich is a sort of cradle of spirituality. A place where a spiritual center can be established, as it was then the case with Klee and Kandinsky. I'm on a mission behind it is a real, deep intention. "

In fact, Sean Scully had a connection to Munich since the early 80s. At that time showed Armin Second his work in the Lenbachhaus. After all the great Munich exhibition houses have him invited to show work. Finally, the House of Art dedicated in 2001 his works from the 90s and a comprehensive retrospective of the famous German philosopher Jürgen Habermas wrote an essay about Scully's work entitled A become a tradition, modernity - Voting and associations.

A year later took Professor Ben Willikens, at that time director of the Art Academy, Sean Scully to Munich. This already knew the painter from his previous time in Munich. The next five years of his professorship (2002-2007) should be a time of intense activity in the Sean Scully class. The initial number of his students was 18, after all it was until the end of his apprenticeship, 52, who had been taught by him.

On the question of Christoph Wiedemann of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, as he wants to prepare its students for the hard job of a freelance artist, Sean Scully said in July 2002 in an interview:

" The first thing I teach them, they must learn to see through relationships. Current trends are the slow-moving tomorrow. It's about his own ways to learn to correctly assess and develop a feel for the right time. That is, you have to be crafts understand know the history of art and know where you want to be in life. You have to understand the system. Talent alone is not enough. See they are early works by van Gogh or Cezanne to: All waste! Is crucial: they have persevered. "

So it was during the semester ( and sometimes beyond ) weeks of intense meetings image with his students, which were filled with lectures on art history and philosophy of art. Have been taken school trips to Dresden, Barcelona and Madrid, Ireland, as well as to New York. For the latter, the students were invited to his exhibition opening at the Metropolitan Museum, where he was a major retrospective was dedicated in November 2006.

During his professorship Sean Scully exhibition projects brought his students on the way to make it as introduce them to professional work. For example, there was an exchange project with the School of Art Dresden, where at different locations works by students of both academies were shown.

In collaboration with the Kunstverein Aichach a group exhibition titled Go Between was organized, which was also shown throughout Europe in various institutions and a field of painting theme that moves between abstraction and figuration. For this project a catalog entitled Go Between is now available.

In 2007, Sean Scully with a large exhibition of his graduate students from the last cohort in the White Box in Munich in 2007 to teach at the Art Academy in Munich from. Also at this exhibition a catalog was published with the title class Scully.

Even today, after the end of his teaching career, Sean Scully is in contact with his former student.

Works

Solo exhibitions in German-speaking (selection)

  • Sean Scully - Retrospective, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt am Main, 1996
  • Sean Scully - Works on Paper 1975-1996, Neue Pinakothek, Munich, 1996
  • Humanizing abstract painting - Sean Scully, Haus der Kunst, Munich, 2001
  • Sean Scully - The architecture of the color, Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vaduz, 2006
  • Sean Scully - Works from the 1980s, Wilhelm- Hack-Museum, Ludwigshafen 2011

Public Art Collections

  • Municipal Gallery Lenbachhaus, Munich
  • Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich
  • Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin
  • Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, UK
  • The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, Texas, USA
  • Galeria d' Arte Moderna, Bologna
  • Albertina, Vienna
  • New Gallery (Kassel ), Kassel, Germany
  • Kunsthaus Zurich ( Green Blue, 1994)

Catalogs

  • Sean Scully exhibition catalog, Munich, 1990
  • Sean Scully - Works on Paper, Munich, 1996
  • Sean Scully - The architecture of the color, Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vaduz, 2006
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