Sean Scully

Becomes interested in American Rhythm & Blues music and starts a music club of his own. Retains his interest in popular music all his life. Apprentices at a commercial printing shop in London. The experience of type-setting teaches attributes of shape and pressure, light and shadow. Joins a graphic design studio. Attends evening classes at the Central School of Art, London with an interest in figurative painting. Regularly visits Vincent van Gogh’s painting Van Gogh’s Chair (1888) at Tate Gallery, London (Now in The National Gallery, London). Its directness has a profound effect on the young artist. Decides to dedicate himself entirely to art studies. Studies at the Croydon College of Art, London. Is interested in van Gogh, Emil Nolde, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Henri Matisse. Attends Newcastle University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England. A University Theatre’s production of Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’ makes a lasting impression. Scully meets Rosemary Purnell, a fellow student. A close relationship develops while both working in the studio of the Painting Department. Visits Morocco. The stripes and colors of local textiles and carpets and the southern light make as deep an impression as they did on Eugene Delacroix, Matisse and Paul Klee. Experiments with sculpture, and form beyond the painted surface, both as a direct response to Morocco, with strips of cloth over wooden structures, combined with the wrapped and the woven, a strong connection to his interest in craft. His technically flawless paintings consist of a complicated grid system of intersecting bands and lines, which form a rich optical field. The illusion of depth and space is activated by color contrasts. The influence of Op Art is clearly visible. At the same time teaches Art one day a week at the City of Sunderland College of Art, Houghton-le-Spring, England. Awarded the Frank Knox Fellowship to attend Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. Makes his first visit to the United States. Continues to make sculptures of grid frames repetitively wrapped and woven in colored felt. In painting, experiments with new techniques; starts using tape and spraying paint in paintings composed of grids of interlaced vertical, horizontal and diagonal bands and stripes. All expressiveness is omitted. First solo exhibition at the Rowan Gallery, London after returning from America. Sells out the entire show. Inset 2 is a temporary break in his rigid grid system and prefigures his device of the inset canvas, which becomes a distinctive feature of his work from the beginning of the 1980s. Teaches at the Chelsea College of Art and Design and Goldsmith’s College of Art and Design, London. Awarded a two-year Harkness Fellowship with which he moves to New York. Lives with the artist Catherine Lee. American art, especially Minimalism, and his friendship with Robert Ryman encourages him to simplify his expression. Creates Change series, 50 acrylic works on paper. This pivotal series reflects the changes in his personal life. At the same time, it prefigures the large, spatially hermetic dark canvases of the following years. Has his first solo exhibition in New York at the Duffy-Gibbs Gallery. Teaches part-time at Princeton University, New Jersey, USA. Develops important friendships and contacts in the academic and art world. Decides together with his wife to choose one his especially important or typical paintings every year to be named after her. This marks the beginning of his private collection, the series TheCatherine Paintings. Travels to Mexico. Inspired by the trip, he begins painting from nature, transcribing his experience of color and light directly on the paper with watercolors. Before 1980 used watercolor only occasionally. First retrospective at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, England travels within the United Kingdom under the auspices of the Arts Council of Great Britain. Starts to withdraw from Minimalist aesthetics. Color and space return. Stops taping his s