Sean Scully facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Sean Scully
Born	(1945-06-30) 30 June 1945 (age 79) Dublin, Ireland
Nationality	Irish
Education	Croydon College of Art (1965–1968) Newcastle University (1968–1972) Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University (1972–1973) (graduate fellowship)
Known for	Painting, printmaking, sculpture, photography, art and writing
Movement	Geometric abstraction and emotional abstraction

Sean Scully (born June 30, 1945) is a famous artist. He was born in Ireland but now lives in America. He creates art as a painter, a printmaker (someone who makes prints), a sculptor, and a photographer.

His artworks are shown in museums all over the world. He was even nominated twice for the Turner Prize, a big award for artists. In 1975, Scully moved from London to New York. He helped change art from a style called Minimalism to one called Emotional abstraction. Minimalism used very simple shapes and colors. Scully wanted to bring more feelings and meaning back into art. He also taught at many universities. His writings and lessons are in a book called Inner: The Collected Writings and Selected Interviews of Sean Scully.

Early Life and Education

Sean Scully was born in Dublin, Ireland, on June 30, 1945. When he was four, his family moved to London, England. They lived in a working-class area and moved homes often. By age nine, Scully knew he wanted to be an artist.

From age 15 to 17, he worked as a typesetter in a printing shop. This job, where he arranged letters for printing, really influenced his later art. Even while working full-time in other jobs, Scully took evening art classes. He focused on drawing and painting people. He often visited the Tate Milbank museum to see Van Gogh's Chair, which inspired him. At 18, he worked at a cardboard factory, loading flattened boxes. The idea of stacking, which is important in his art, came from this experience.

Studying Art

In 1965, at age 20, Sean Scully started studying art full-time. He went to Croydon College of Art in London. Later, in 1968, he moved to Newcastle University. While there, a play called Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett made a big impression on him.

In 1969, Scully visited Morocco. He was amazed by the colorful stripes woven into tents and robes by local people. This trip also influenced his art. In 1972, he received a special scholarship to study at Harvard University in the United States. During this time, he started trying new art methods, like using tape and spray paint.

Art Career

Starting Out: 1970–1980

Sean Scully's first art show in London was a big success. All his paintings sold out! During this time, he also taught art at colleges like Chelsea College of Art and Design. In 1975, when he was 30, Scully moved to New York City. He received a special fellowship to help him live and work there.

In New York, he became friends with other artists, like Robert Ryman. Scully's early work combined ideas from American Minimalism and European Op art. He created art with layers and grids, mixing these two styles in a new way. For a few years, his paintings used mostly gray and black colors.

In 1979, Scully started a series of paintings called The Catherine Paintings. He shared his art studio with his third wife, artist Catherine Lee. The idea was to pick one important painting each year they were together. These paintings would then be part of a collection named after her. This was the start of Scully's own private art collection.

Moving Beyond Minimalism: 1980–1982

Backs and Fronts, 1981, oil on linen and canvas. This painting helped Scully move away from Minimalism.

By 1980, Scully felt he needed to add more human feelings to his art. He traveled to Morocco and Mexico many times. He felt these trips helped him focus on what was "interesting, engaging, perverse, and beautiful about human nature." He wanted to bring back metaphor, spirituality, and poetry into painting.

In 1981, Scully had his first big art show in Birmingham, England. This show clearly showed his move away from Minimalism. He started using more colors and visible brushstrokes instead of hard, taped lines. A very important painting from this time was Backs and Fronts (1981). This artwork was shown in a major exhibition in 1982 and was seen as a breakthrough. Artist Gillian Wearing said it "broke the logjam of American minimalist painting."

Geometric Abstraction: 1982–Present

In 1982, Scully began working with art dealer David McKee. This was a very important partnership for ten years. That summer, Scully started making small artworks on pieces of wood. He named these works Ridge, Plum, and Bear after islands near where he was staying in Montauk. He also began to mix strict geometric shapes with expressive textures and colors in his larger paintings. An example is Heart of Darkness, inspired by a famous story.

In 1983, Scully started working with a printmaker named Mohammad O. Khalil. This was the beginning of his long career in printmaking. That same year, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship for Fine Arts.

In 1984, the Museum of Modern Art in New York included Scully's work in a big international show. The next year, he had his first solo museum exhibition in the United States. Other major museums also started buying his large paintings. Scully's paintings from this time were very big and strong, both in size and look.

By 1987, Scully's art became simpler, flatter, and smaller. He also started using lighter colors, like in his 1988 painting Pale Fire. While in Mexico, he experimented with watercolors on a beach. This led to his Wall of Light series, which explores architecture and light. In 1989, the Whitechapel Gallery in London held a solo show for Scully. This show then traveled to Spain and Germany, making them his first solo exhibitions in mainland Europe.

In 1988, Scully started adding steel pieces into his paintings, like in Why and What (Yellow). By 1991, he used more steel, setting oil paintings into large steel panels. He also began using a checkerboard pattern often. In 1992, Scully filmed a documentary about artist Henri Matisse in Morocco. In 1993, The Catherine Paintings were shown for the first time in Texas. In 1994, he opened a second art studio in Barcelona, Spain. He returned to Morocco in 1995, taking photos for his Atlas Walls collection.

In 1995, Scully moved back to New York and opened a large new studio. He also gave many talks at universities. In 1997, his photographs were shown for the first time in Spain. In 1999, his prints had a big show in Vienna, Austria. A book listing all his prints from 1969 to 1999 was also published.

Art from 2001 to 2013

In 2001, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth bought all eighteen paintings from the Catherine series. These paintings, from 1979 to 1996, now have their own special room in the museum. From 2002 to 2007, Scully was a professor of painting in Munich, Germany. In 2004, a big show of his art opened in Finland. It then traveled to Germany and Australia. While in Australia, Scully explored the red desert.

Raval Rojo, 2004, oil on linen.

From 2005 to 2006, Sean Scully's Wall of Light series was shown in museums across the United States. This included famous places like The Phillips Collection and the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art. In 2005, Scully traveled with students to Inisheer, an island off the Irish coast. There, he took photographs for his Aran collection. In 2006, the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin opened "The Sean Scully Room," a special permanent display of his work. In 2007, a big show of his art opened in Barcelona, Spain, and traveled to other cities.

In 2009, another major exhibition of his work opened in Germany and traveled to Northern Ireland. In 2010, a tour of his important early works from the 1980s began in Ireland and traveled to England and Germany. In 2011, the Chazen Museum of Art opened a new part of their museum with a show of Scully's "Liliane" paintings. In 2012, Scully had nine more solo museum shows around the world.

Recent Work: 2018–Present

In 2018, Scully had fourteen public exhibitions globally. This included a huge sculpture called Boxes of Air in Mexico City. Other museum shows were in Moscow, Russia, the Netherlands, and Germany.

Opulent Ascension, 2019, a sculpture by Sean Scully.

In 2019, the exhibition Sean Scully: Sea Star opened at The National Gallery, London. It showed Scully's art next to works by the famous artist J. M. W. Turner. Also in 2019, a documentary film about him, Unstoppable. Sean Scully & The Art of Everything, was shown on BBC Two in the UK. For the 58th Venice Biennale, a major art event, Scully presented Sean Scully: Human. This show included new paintings and a sculpture called Opulent Ascension inside a beautiful church in Venice.

Other Creative Works

Music

Sean Scully's mother, Holly, was a singer. Scully himself loved rhythm and blues music when he was a teenager. He even owned and ran an R&B club in London for a short time. He was also in an R&B band with his brother and a friend.

In 2016, a musician named Billy Martin performed with Scully's large steel sculpture Boxes of Air. This performance led to a musical piece called "Boxing for Sean." In 2019, a music group called Merzouga released a sound composition called "The Language of Light - Music to the Work of Sean Scully." It featured Scully's own words and voice.

Writing

Scully started writing about art and his own work in the 1980s. However, he began to write more seriously from 1996 onwards. In 2016, a book was published called Inner: the collected writings and selected interviews of Sean Scully.

Personal Life

Sean Scully became a father at age 19, when his son Paul was born in 1965. Sadly, Paul died in a car accident in 1983 when he was 18. While at Newcastle University, Scully met Rosemary Purnell, and they married in 1971. They later divorced.

Scully married artist Catherine Lee in 1978, but they divorced in 1998. In 2006, he married artist Liliane Tomasko. Their son, Oisin Scully, was born in 2009.

Where to See His Art

Sean Scully's art is in many public collections around the world. Here are some of the places where you can find his work:

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
• Cincinnati Art Museum – Cincinnati, OH
• Cleveland Museum of Art – Cleveland, OH
• Corcoran Gallery of Art – Washington, D.C.
• Dallas Museum of Art – Dallas, TX
• Denver Art Museum – Denver, CO
• Des Moines Art Center – Des Moines, IA
• De Young Museum – San Francisco, CA
• Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University – Cambridge, MA
• Glenstone – 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
  • Catherine Series
• 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 – 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.
  • 8.10.89 (1989)
• Orlando Museum of Art – Orlando, FL
• 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
• Smith College Museum of Art – Northampton, MA
• Smithsonian American Art Museum – Washington, DC
  • Works in the SAAM collection
• 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
• 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
• Albertina – Vienna, Austria
• Arts Council of Great Britain – London, England
• BAWAG – Vienna, Austria
• Bavarian State Painting Collections – Munich, Germany
• Bibliothèque nationale de France – Paris, France
• Birmingham Museum of Art – Birmingham, England
• British Council – London, England
• Centre national des arts plastiques – Paris, France
• Crawford Art Gallery – Cork, Ireland
  • East Coast Light I (1973)
• Daimler Art Collection – Stuttgart, Germany
• Deutsche Bank – London, UK
• EMMA, ESPOO, Museum of Modern Art – Helsinki, Finland
• Fitzwilliam Museum – Cambridge, England
• CaixaForum Barcelona – Barcelona, Spain
• Gallery of Modern Art László Vass Collection – Veszprém, Hungary
• Hunterian Art Gallery – Glasgow, Scotland
• Hugh Lane Gallery – Dublin, Ireland
  • Works in the Hugh Lane collection
• 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
• Laing Art Gallery – Newcastle, England
• Louisiana Museum of Modern Art – Humlebaek, Denmark
• The Maramotti Collection – Reggio Emilia, Italy
• Manchester Art Gallery – Manchester, England
• Museum Folkwang – 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
• Musee Jenisch – Vevey, Switzerland
• Musee National d´Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou – 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
• Mumok, Stiftung Ludwig – Vienna, Austria
• Museum Pfalzgalerie – Kaiserslautern, Germany
• National Museum Cardiff – Cardiff, Wales
• Norwich Castle – Norwich, England
• Pier Arts Centre – Orkney, Scotland
• Ruhr University Bochum – Bochum, Germany
• 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
• Lenbachhaus – Munich, Germany
• Tate Modern – London, England
  • Works in the Tate collection
• The UBS Art Collection – Zürich/Basel, Switzerland
• Ulster Museum – Belfast, 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

Famous Quotes

• "Art, especially abstract art, has to be a moral act. If not, it's likely to just be decoration."
• "Why stripes? Because they can be anything. And they can be anything because they are nothing. To make nothing into something is more interesting than making something into something else."
• "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."