Sean Scully: Figure/Abstract

Hardcover | 24.38 x 2.29 x 30.23 cm | 200 pp

Hatje Cantz | 2014 | 9783775739009 

Scully (b.1945, Dublin) is considered one of the most significant abstract painters of our time. For decades he has produced a wealth of variations on his core theme of lines and stripes, creating works with a fascinating range of tone and expression from the romantic to the melancholic.

Early on in his ca­reer Scully did figural work, to which he still feels in­debted; “To this day my paintings retain a sense of the body, and the feeling of a physical relationship with the world.” He considers German Expressionism one of his sources of inspiration and specifically cites the influence of artists André Derain, Henri Matisse, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. The stroke of the brush is a visible component of his paint­erly abstractions. The edges of his fields of colour are delineated by hand, which lends his compositions a haptic quality.