Immense in scale and ambition the paintings have as their genesis the Doric principle, which originated in ancient Greece. Scully’s works often have about them an architectural order and these new paintings take these principles to new levels. Existing somewhere between the abstract and the figurative they have about them something of the essential and the eternal.
As well as the Doric works curator Sally Radic will hang a room with prints, watercolours, and paintings by the artist from various periods in his thirty year career. These works will explore other areas of
Scully’s practice as well as showing how the earlier work is a precursor for this new body of work.
“The inspiration for DORIC was the architectural form that accompanied the birth of Democracy. Athens being the cradle of Democracy, and all that followed in the west, was what I wanted to pay homage to. I wanted to express order and humanism. It is very rare that an artist’s intentions, are met so directly by location, so it is extraordinary that their world premie takes place in the city they refer to: Athens.”
Sean Scully born 1945 has twice been named a Turner Prizenominee. He has been the subject of many major museum exhibitions including, most recently, “The Prints of Sean Scully” at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art in 2007, “Sean Scully” at the Scottish Nation Gallery of Modern Art in 2007, and “Sean Scully. Wall of Light” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York in 2007. His works are in numerous collection around the world including The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, MOMA, The Tate, and the Museo Nacional Reina Sofia Madrid.
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