Sean Scully

Sean Scully was born in Dublin on 1945. Due to financial circumstances, the family emigrated to England four years later. Scully grew up in South London in a working class area and attended Croydon's College of Art between 1965 and 1968. Between 1968 and 1972 he taught at the University of Northumbria, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He subsequently taught at Chelsea School of Art and Goldsmith's College, University of London between 1973 and 1975. In 1972 he was awarded a John Knox Fellowship and attended Harvard University in the U.S.A. In 1975 he moved to the United States of America and eight years later took out American citizenship. Sean Scully lives between New York, London and Barcelona. His admiration for Matisse is acknowledged. In his formative years Scully was greatly influenced by Mark Rothko and from then on his work eschewed any pictorial representation. Another early influence was the geometric paintings of the British painter Bridget Reilly. In 1969 he travelled to Morocco and this north African country's overwhelming light and dramatic colourful visual patterns had a lasting effect on his work. Sean Scully is acknowledged as one of the leading contemporary abstract painters.