Sean Scully Books

"Irish-born Sean Scully is one of the most important abstract painters alive today. Over the course of more than thirty years, he has produced a vibrant, compelling and constantly inventive body of work in a range of media that is widely collected and internationally exhibited. His familiar signature style of lines or bands of color alluding to architectural elements such as portals, windows and walls is instantly recognizable." "Published to accompany a major European exhibition tour, Sean Scully: A Retrospective includes work in all media - painting, photographs, prints, drawings and watercolors - from the early 1970s to the present, the only book to cover Scully's entire career to date. Texts by respected curators Danilo Eccher, Lorand Hegyi and Maria Lluisa Borras and award-winning American critic and art historian Donald Kuspit position the artist in his rightful place within the traditions of earlier abstraction and of painting in general, while discussing the spiritual, emotional and very human nature of his art."--Jacket

Sean Scully is among the greatest abstract painters of our age. He is also one of the most outspoken. Since the late 1960s, Scully’s visual expressiveness has been matched by a verbal dynamism that is no less arresting than his art. Varying widely in form from brief reflections of compressed eloquence to essay-long meditations on artists such as Vincent Van Gogh, Giorgio Morandi and Mark Rothko–Scully’s writings are distinguished by a brutal lyricism and the effortlessness of their aphoristic turn of phrase. At once biographical and political, poignant and unflinching, the nearly 200 texts that comprise Inner: The Collected Writings and Selected Interviews of Sean Scully provide a unique perspective on one of the most engaging artistic imaginations of the past half century. Here, readers will discover the effusions of a mind tirelessly wrestling with the profoundest issues of art, cultural history, and what it means to be a creator in the contemporary world. The volume will be accompanied by key images illustrating Scully’s words as well as facsimile reproductions of handwritten pages by the artist into which drawings have been integrated. SEAN SCULLY (*1945, Dublin) is one of the most famous artists of his generation. In addition to numerous exhibitions worldwide, he has been honored with important awards such as the Guggenheim Fellowship and Harckness Fellowship.

The internationally renowned artist Sean Scully (*1945) is known above all for his abstract, expressively painted works. The artist creates large-format paintings with an intense application of color and rough brushstrokes; he often has checkered or striped patterns emerge, thus reproducing the aesthetic of geometric minimalism. In the planned exhibition at the Albertina, Sean Scully: Eleuthera, Sean Scully and his art will be shown from a much more private side. At the center of the exhibition is the “Eleuthera” series from the years 2016–17, in which Scully examines a very familiar topic. The series consists of twenty-five large-format oil paintings depicting Oisín, the artist’s seven-year-old son, playing on the beach of Eleuthera, an island in the Bahamas. The accompanying publication presents this new group of works for the first time.

Sean Scully uses pastels to create abstract works which are an emotive response to color. This book brings together 100 of his pastels in all their subtle and ecstatic celebration of the possibilities of color." "Since 1993 Arthur Danto has written four texts about Sean Scully's work. They are brought together for the first time in a volume which traces the history and development of this major artist in the writings of one of America's leading art critics

The Irish-born artist Sean Scully has created a painterly oeuvre that, in this volume, reveals itself as vitally important in the ongoing dialogue about painting. Horizontal and vertical stripes are the sole motif in his work. He alternately groups strips of paint together and lays multiple stripes of color over one another, which produce visually irritating clashes. It is a working method that is revealed in the works themselves, in the places where these dueling lines meet; edges tell the story of process. The seemingly endless number of neutral stripes leave these paintings open to a variety of interpretations; they allow the viewers freedom to imprint their own visions on them. Usually in a large format, they recall landscapes, facades, buildings, and ornaments. Along with 254 color reproductions, this book includes a complete biography, several critical essays, and an illuminating interview with the artist. Sean Scully was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1945. Since moving to the United States in the mid-1970s, Scully has taught at major institutions including Princeton University, received a Guggenheim Fellowship, and been the subject of a major touring exhibition organized by the High Museum in Atlanta in 1996. He is represented in virtually every major public collection of 20th-century art. Essays by Francisco Jarauta, Bernd Kluser, Maria Muller and Armin Zweite. 254 color and 5 b&w images 11.75 x 9.75 inches

The Fundacion Juan March presents this bilingual edition of Sean Scully's essay, Bodies of Light, as a supplementary publication accompanying the exhibition, The Abstraction of From Northern Romanticism to Abstract Expressionism, on view in Madrid from October 5th, 2007, to January 13, 2008. The essay was first published in Spanish in the magazine Pasajes (Valencia). In Bodies of Light, therefore, Scully unites the artists who begin and end our exhibition and does it with specific reference to the proposal by Robert Rosenblum that inspired that of the existence of a line that connects the Romantic sublime of 19th-century Northern Europe with the American abstract sublime of the 20th century. It is perhaps no coincidence that Scully himself - an abstract painter born in Northern Europe (Dublin, Ireland, 1945), who became an American citizen in 1983, and lives in New York - shares biographical traits with that lengthy history.

Jack the Wolf lives in a beautiful cave on a short mountain, near Colorfull Town. Jack is a happy and benevolent wolf, with only one weakness: CHOCOLATE. Follow Jack the Wolf through the pages of this beautifully illustrated book by world-renowned artist Sean Scully and his son Oisin Scully, to discover the trouble Jack causes to the children of Colorfull Town in his nightly hunts for chocolate dinners, and how his new friend Rebecca the Rabbit helps him restore happiness to the sad children of the town.

Scully's signature, earth-toned horizontal strata find new, shimmering depths when painted on aluminum and rendered in aquatint This book, Dark Yet, presents recent abstractions by Sean Scully (born 1945) that build on two decades-long series with a new painterly freedom: Wallsof colored blocks vibrantly stacked on the picture plane, and Landlinesforming strata of gloriously earthy colors. Graphic works based on a loose netlike pattern add a more pervious kind of visual delicacy. This book was published in conjunction with Galerie Max Hetzler

Sean Scully's abstract paintings are renowned for transcending mere formal exploration of color, form, and light, reflecting his perspectives on art, society, ethics, and metaphysics. Despite his fame as a painter, his sculptures have received less attention. Scully's sculptural works involve layering materials like steel, stone, bronze, and painted aluminum to create horizontal structures that rise upward, echoing the stripes found in his paintings. This monograph is the first to gather his significant sculptures into one volume, featuring numerous images and extensive essays on his work. Born in Dublin in 1945, Scully is celebrated as one of the leading contemporary artists, engaging deeply with Abstract Expressionism, Action Painting, and Minimalism. He splits his time between New York and Munich, with upcoming exhibitions in 2019 at the LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur and San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice. Scully's contributions to the art world have earned him prestigious accolades, including the Guggenheim Fellowship and the Harkness Fellowship. His legacy continues to grow as he remains a pivotal figure in contemporary art.