Sean Scully: Uriel
1997, Oil on canvas, 243,8 x 365,7 cm, Inv. Nr. 1237, acquired in 1997 Sean Scully, born 1945 in Dublin, Ireland, lives in Barcelona, London und New York
The large-format oil painting "Uriel" by Sean Scully, born in 1945 in Ireland and living in New York since 1975, is proof of the innovative power of painting at the end of the century.
The artist's large-format pictures are rooted in American post-war art. The austere, almost minimal style of the early works is superseded in later works by a brilliant use of painting material and coloration. Scully's picture compositions are static. They are based on joining horizontal and vertical rectangles, which are in turn divided by bars and stripes. The monumental order that initially seems severe is tensely related to the painting characterized by expressiveness and sensuousness.
In "Uriel" three canvases that the artist painted separately are joined into a seemingly fitted unit. The stability appears deceptive, though, because the composition threatens to dissolve into its single elements again at a closer look. The artist's intention with his pictures is ..."to create something comprehensive that does not stay captured in the lifeless egocentricity of what is closed and finished, but which is in a permanent state of becoming."
Ingrid Pohl
