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I
rish
& I
nternational
A
rt
A
uction
M
onday
5
th
D
ecember
2016
at
6.00
pm
57
55 Sean Scully (b.1945) 9.13.02 (2002)signed & titled lower right
watercolour on paper
35.60 x 43.20cm (14 x 17in)
Provenance:
Adler & Co. Gallery, San Francisco (label verso);
Taylor Gallery, Belfast;
Solomon Fine Art, Dublin (label verso);
Private Collection
€20,000-30,000 (£17,391-26,086)
Scully was born in Dublin in 1945 and raised in South London. He studied at Croydon College of Art and Newcastle Uni-
versity. He was a recipient of a graduate fellowship at Harvard in the early 1970s and subsequently settled in New York.
His work is represented in the permanent collections of many major museums and public galleries around the world and for
many years Scully’s works have achieved some of the highest prices paid for a living artist and he is undoubtedly the most
successful Irish born living artist. Scully’s paintings are often made up of a number of panels and are abstract. His paintings
typically involve architectural constructions of abutting walls and panels of painted stripes. In recent years he has augmented
his trademark stripes by also deploying a mode of compositional patterning more reminiscent of a checkerboard. He has
stated that this style represents the way in which Ireland has moved towards a more chequered society and he relates this to
growing up in Ireland where everything was chequered, even the fields and the people.