Wall of Light Summer 8.05

Label

While Sean Scully is an intellectual painter and a careful colorist, ultimately he is an artist of emotion. The nature of his abstraction is akin to that of the Abstract Expressionists (such as Mark Rothko, whose work is also on display in this gallery), who sought to create art as emotional experiences. Scully’s work deals with the push and pull of pure color, suggesting, often ambiguously, both the idea of deep space and a shallow stage. He offers his viewers an opportunity to engage with art in a manner that elicits both conscious and unconscious responses. He contrasts the seemingly rational order of rectangles on a plane with deeply felt resonances of the color. As with poetry, Wall of Light, Summer attempts not to describe, but rather to allude to the light and color of summer.

Born in Ireland and raised in England, Scully became a US citizen in 1983. Dividing his time between his studios in New York and Europe, he is today hailed as one of the leading painters in a tradition of abstraction that leads back to Piet Mondrian and the early modernists of the 20th century.

From the 2019 exhibition The Expanding Universe of Postwar Art, curated by John R. Stomberg Ph.D, Virginia Rice Kelsey 1961s Director

Course History

SART 25, Painting I, Enrico Riley, Fall 2014

SART 31, Painting II, Enrico Riley, Winter 2015

SART 25, Painting I, Enrico Riley, Spring 2015

Studio Art 77.01, Senior Seminar II, Karol Kawiaka, Spring 2023

Studio Art 77.02, Senior Seminar II, Jen Caine, Spring 2023

Exhibition History

Churchill P. Lathrop Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, July 13-September 8, 2006.

Modern and Contemporary Art at Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Museum of Art, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, September 26,2009-March 15, 2010.

Sean Scully, The Art of the Stripe, William B. Jaffe and Evelyn A. Jaffe Hall Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 12-March 9, 2008.

The Expanding Universe of Postwar Art, Northeast Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 26-December 1, 2019.

Publication History

Brian Kennedy, Sean Scully: The Reality of Abstraction, Hood Museum of Art Quarterly, No. 16, Summer 2006, Hanover: Trustees of Dartmouth College, p. 6.

Annual Report 2005-6, Hanover, New Hampshire: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 2006, ill. p.25.

Brian Kennedy, Sean Scully: The Art of the Stripe, Hanover: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 2008, ill. p. 57, 118.

Brian P. Kennedy and Emily Shubert Burke, Modern and Contemporary Art at Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Museum of Art, Hanover: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 2009 p.88, no.63.

John R. Stomberg, The Hood Now: Art and Inquiry at Dartmouth, Hanover, New Hampshire: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, 2019, p. 204, ill. plate no. 135.

Provenance

L.A. Louver Gallery, Venice, California; sold to present collection, 2006.

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Subjects