While still a student at Newcastle University, Scully recalls setting out on a road trip to Morocco in a quest, he said, to “see” what the famous French artist Henri Matisse had “seen”.
In 1912 and 1913, Matisse made two trips to Morocco that left their mark on his vision of the world and his art. Of his first visit, Scully confided that he was “fascinated for life” by the country and its people.
“I loved the people. I loved the exotic patterns, the tents on the beach, the lines going in all directions,” emphasizes the Dublin native in 1945.
The carpets, like the tiles, “were on the walls and on the floor,” he describes. “It was the geometry of ecstasy,” sums up the painter widely acclaimed for his abstract oil paintings. Among his best-known works are “Green Ascending” and “Red.”
The artist often combines geometric structures with contrasting edges and thick surfaces to form alternating panels of colored squares or bands.
In 2013, Sean Scully was made a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Arts in London. He has also received honorary degrees from prestigious institutions such as the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, the National University of Ireland in Dublin, the Miguel Hernandez University in Valencia, the Burren College of Art of the National University of Ireland and Newcastle University in the United Kingdom, among others.
The artist will exhibit several of his new works at Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery in Seoul as part of “Soul,” an exhibition that opens next Tuesday. And starting in late October, New York’s Lisson Gallery will present paintings he made in the American metropolis in the early 1980s.
2024-08-29 21:12:31