“Robe” (“Robe”)

Details

Provenance: Private ownership, Southern Germany, acquired directly from the artist.

Description

• Appealing contrast between a linear structure and lyrical colour field painting
• Scully is one of the most important abstract painters of his generation
• Significant works can be found in renowned museums worldwide The basic structure of the composition “Robe” is created using a fine grid of intersecting vertical and horizontal pencil lines. The painter Sean Scully applies his warm, earthy, velvety colours to these transverse rectangular fields. Everything is soft, flowing, the brushstroke clearly recognisable and the slight imprecision of the human hand is visible in every detail of the line. The fine texture of his compositions and their contemplative feel are characteristic of the works of the Irish painter, whose lyrical abstraction makes him one of the most important contemporary artists. At the beginning of his artistic career, which now spans over 50 years, Scully lived in New York and became friends with Robert Ryman. During this time, he worked in the “hard edge” style, which he later discarded in favour of his own unique approach. Everything he paints has a reference to objects and is the result of his own visual experience. In New York, for example, Scully was inspired by the horizontal and vertical lines of the street intersections and the deep valleys created by the skyscrapers. The title “Robe” refers to the famous portrait of Pope Innocent X by Diego Velázquez with the mozetta worn over the shoulder. Sean Scully was born in Dublin in 1945. He moved to New York in 1975 after studying art in London. In addition to New York, the artist also lives and works in Barcelona and Munich. In 2002, he received a teaching position at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. Today, his works can be found in numerous important public collections, including the Pinakothek der Moderne and the Lenbachhaus in Munich, the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin and the Kunsthaus Zürich.