SEAN SCULLY’s NATURAL GEOMETRY
Superb Color, Light + Texture in Cubes + Blocks
After the challenging past year and a half, summer 2021 should be a memorable one. Art lovers have countless incredible exhibitions and art events to look forward to in the next few months. One of these is a show opening on June 20 at The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, titled Sean Scully: The Shape of Ideas. It is a significant retrospective exhibiting Scully’s most notable works from the 1970s to the present.
Sean Scully is an American-based artist born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1945. Known primarily for his large-scale abstract paintings, he is also a printmaker, sculptor and photographer, and a two-time Turner Prize nominee. He was one of the artists responsible for leading the transition from Minimalism to Emotional abstraction. His work is highly celebrated and held in the collections of major institutions worldwide. He began his artistic journey in London, studying at Croydon College of Art and Newcastle University. Later on, he moved to America after being awarded the Frank Knox Memorial Fellowship in 1972 to attend Harvard. The earliest of the exhibited works are products of the artist’s time there. During this time, he traveled to New York City, one of the most important and influential places for minimalist and abstract art at the time. He would then officially move there in 1975. These early works, such as Harvard Frame Painting (1972), are extraordinarily innovative and experimental. Green Light (1972-73) and Inset #2 (1973) are also early examples of the “painting within a painting,” a concept he has developed throughout his entire career. His works from the 80s consist of combined panels and simple forms that create large-scale compositions. In the mid-80s, he traveled to Mexico for the first time. Inspired by the country’s architecture and its colors, these travels encouraged him to take up watercolor. The different periods in his career are represented in this major retrospective. His printmaking work is also expressed through lithographs, woodcuts, etchings, and aquatints.
The exhibition consists of 49 paintings and 42 works on paper and is organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The museum’s CEO and George D. Widener Director, Timothy Rub, has stated: “This exhibition will convey the richness and complexity of Scully’s vision and will demonstrate the important place that he occupies in the still-unfolding story of abstraction. We are pleased to honor one of this country’s leading painters through an exhibition that explores the full scope of his artistic evolution.” Marla Price, Director of the Modern and contributor to the exhibition’s catalog, also notes that: “Scully has spoken of his career as a ‘rolling cannibalization,’ in which he scavenges his own work and that of others to expand, develop, and move forward. The systematic elements in his early works have never really disappeared as he continues to explore different combinations of building units or motifs and then pair them with emotion and content.”
Sean Scully: The Shape of Ideas is on view at The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth from June 20 through October 10, 2021. It will then open at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the spring of 2022.
