Sean Scully facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Sean Scully
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| Born | 30 June 1945 Dublin, Ireland
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| 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 30 June 1945) is a famous Irish-born artist who now lives and works in America. He is best known for his large, colorful paintings, often featuring stripes and blocks. Besides painting, he also creates prints, sculptures, and photographs.
Scully's art is displayed in museums all over the world. He is famous for helping to change modern art. In the 1970s, many artists were making very simple, plain art called Minimalism. Scully helped bring emotion, feeling, and meaning back into abstract painting. He has also taught art at many universities.
Contents
Early Life and First Jobs
Sean Scully was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1945. When he was four, his family moved to a working-class area in south London. Even as a young boy, Scully knew he wanted to be an artist.
From age 15 to 17, he worked as an apprentice typesetter in a printing shop. This job, where he arranged letters and text for printing, later influenced his art. He also worked in graphic design and as a messenger. During this time, he took evening classes at the Central School of Art.
One of his early jobs was loading flattened cardboard boxes onto trucks. The sight of the stacked boxes gave him an idea that he would use many years later in his famous stacked paintings and sculptures.
Learning to Be an Artist
In 1965, at age 20, Scully began studying art full-time at Croydon College of Art. He later went to Newcastle University. A trip to Morocco in 1969 was a huge inspiration. He was amazed by the colorful stripes he saw on local tents and clothing. These stripes would become a key part of his artwork.
In 1972, he won a special fellowship to study at Harvard University in the United States. This was his first time in America, and he started experimenting with new art techniques, like using tape and spray paint.
Career as an Artist
Moving to New York
In 1975, Scully moved to New York City. At first, his paintings were influenced by Minimalism, an art style that uses very simple shapes and limited colors. For a while, he painted mostly in shades of black and grey.
But by the early 1980s, Scully wanted to put more human feeling into his art. He felt that Minimalism was too cold and empty. He said that things like "the ability to make relationships, to be metaphorical and referential, spiritual, poetic" had been taken out of painting, and he wanted to put them back in.
A New Style of Painting
A painting called Backs and Fronts from 1981 was a major turning point for Scully. It was a huge painting made of many different panels. It showed his new style, with bright colors, visible brushstrokes, and hand-drawn stripes instead of perfect, hard-edged lines. This painting was a big deal in the art world and showed that Scully was moving away from Minimalism.
From this point on, Scully became known for his unique style of geometric abstraction. This means he used simple shapes like rectangles and stripes, but filled them with rich color and texture that expressed deep emotions.
Becoming Famous Worldwide
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Scully's fame grew. Major museums, like the Museum of Modern Art in New York, began buying his paintings. He had his first major museum show in the U.S. in 1985.
In 1989, he had important exhibitions in London, Madrid, and Munich, which made him well-known across Europe. He also began to add new materials to his work, sometimes setting his paintings into large steel panels.
The Wall of Light Series
While on a beach in Mexico in 1988, Scully was inspired to create a new series of paintings called Wall of Light. These paintings were based on the way light and shadow fall on old stone walls. This series became one of his most famous. An exhibition of these paintings toured museums across the United States from 2005 to 2006, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Art in China and New Projects
In 2014, Scully became one of the first major Western artists to have a large exhibition of his work in China. The show, called Follow the Heart, was a huge success. He even created a giant outdoor sculpture made of steel called China Piled-Up for the exhibition.
In recent years, Scully has focused more on sculpture. He created a series of tall sculptures called Towers and another series of stacked metal blocks. He also returned to painting people, creating a series of paintings called Eleuthera, inspired by his young son. The name comes from a Greek word meaning "free."
In 2019, he had a special exhibition at the National Gallery, London, where his paintings were shown next to works by the famous British artist J. M. W. Turner.
Other Work
Scully's mother was a singer, and he grew up loving rhythm and blues music. As a teenager, he even ran an R&B club in London.
He has also written a lot about art. In 2016, a book of his writings and interviews, called Inner, was published.
Personal Life
Scully's first son, Paul, was born in 1965. Sadly, Paul died in a car accident in 1983.
Scully has been married four times. He married his current wife, artist Liliane Tomasko, in 2006. They have a son named Oisin, who was born in 2009.
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."
Images for kids
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Crate of Air, 2018. This sculpture was shown at the Inside Outside exhibition in Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
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Opulent Ascension, 2019, sculpture. This was displayed in the Basilica of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice.
