Sean Scully

Sean Scully was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1945. Raised in London, he studied at Croydon College of Art between 1965-7 and at Newcastle University between 1967-71. In 1975 he was awarded a Harkness Fellowship and established a studio in New York, where he settled, becoming an American citizen in 1983.

Over the years Scully has developed and refined his own recognisable style of geometric abstraction. Although he is predominately known for his monumental paintings, he is also a gifted printmaker. Investigating the formal language of abstraction and minimalism, the artist’s prints feature the same motifs explored in his paintings; colourful grids, striped patterns, stacks of layered colours, windows, square compositions, and the spaces in between, are all imbued with the artist’s personal histories and experiences. Over the past forty years Scully has made a notable body of woodcuts, etchings and most recently digital prints originally drawn, by hand, on an iPhone.

Scully had his first solo exhibition at the Rowan Gallery, London in 1973. He had his first retrospective at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, in 1981, which travelled throughout the UK. Recent solo exhibitions include The Parrish Museum, New York; Bucerius Kunst Forum, Hamburg; La Fundació Catalunya La Pedrera, Barcelona; Daegu Museum of Art, Daegu (2025); Centre Pompidou, Paris; National Gallery, Budapest; The He Art Museum, Shunde; The Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin (2024); Houghton Hall, Norfolk; Thorvaldsens Museum, Copenhagen; Zagreb Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb (2023); Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia; Center of Contemporary Art Znaki Czasu, Toruń' Langen Foundation, Neuss; Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna (2022); Benaki Museum, Athens, Greece; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas; Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin (2021); Skulpturenpark Waldfrieden, Wuppertal; LWL-Museum for Art and Culture, Münster (2020); Centreo de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga; Albertina, Vienna; San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice Biennale, Venice; Villa Panza, Fondo Ambiente Italiano, Varese; National Gallery of Art, London; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Connecticut (2019).

His paintings and prints are held in the collections of Tate, London; Albertina, Vienna; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; Instituto Valencia d'Arte Modern, Valencia; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; National Gallery, Washington; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas; Guangzhou Museum of Art, Guangzhou, China; and China Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China.

Scully has held teaching positions at Chelsea College of Art and Design, London; Goldsmith's College of Art and Design, London; Princeton University, New Jersey; Parsons School of Art, New York; and most recently at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Munich. He was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1989 and in 1993, and was elected a Royal Academician in 2013. He participated for the first time at the Venice Biennale in 2014.

Cristea Roberts Gallery is the representative for Sean Scully's prints, and will stage a solo exhibition with the artist in June 2027. 

Sean Scully lives and works in New York, USA and in Bavaria, Germany.