Sean Scully

Knoedler & Co, New York
Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York

The canvas is laid on board and is in excellent original condition with strong passages of impasto throughout. Under ultraviolet light, there appear to be no signs of retouching. Held in a simple gilt box frame.
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Scully's Wall of Light series is undoubtedly his most important body of work to date. The genesis for the series was a visit to the ancient Mayan ruins at Yucatan, Mexico in 1983. He became fascinated by the unique effects of light reverberating off the rough stone texture of the ruined walls and was inspired to paint a watercolour of vertical and horizontal bars (or bricks as the artist calls them) incorporating the intense and luminous colour tones he recalled from the ruins. It was not until 1998, however, that he revisited the fluid forms of the watercolour and began a dynamic new series based on the theme.

He has explained, 'I'm trying to turn stone into light' (Scully, quoted by G. Glueck, 'A Mezzanine Done Over in Bricks, Evocative and Immediate', The New York Times, 29 September 2006) and the strong pictorial architecture of the present work is enlivened by an invigorating system of over-painting that gives each brick an added depth and complexity as the underlying colours subtly merge in and out of the grid-like forms. The series now consists of over 200 paintings and although initially inspired by the specific light effects of the Yucatan, Scully has used the seemingly structured network of bricks to explore numerous variations of colour, time, atmosphere and place. The present work refers specifically to Chelsea and to his new studio in that area of New York which he acquired in 1999.

The series was the subject of a major exhibition Sean Scully: Wall of Light which toured in 2005 - 2006 to The Phillips Collection, Washington; the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth; the Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati; and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.