It seems that with the policy of disinflammation and institutional normality that preaches the Government from Salvador Illa, La Fundació La Caixa has not been the only asset to return to Catalonia; Although it is only temporarily and to present an exhibition, the painter and abstract sculptor Sean Scully (Dublin, 1946) has also done so after a controversial exit in 2019, in the assured that he left for the rise of nationalism and the imposition of Catalan.
The reason for its punctual return is that the Fundació Catalunya La Pedrera wanted to gather a significant sample of its work that explains its evolution through 60 pieces, both painting and sculpture and some photographs. The retrospective, which is named Sean Scully, He has been curated by Javier Molins and can be contemplated until July 6 in the exhibition hall of the La Pedrera de Gràcia building of the Catalan capital.
The exhibition is presented as the hard nucleus of an entire ecosystem of activities dedicated to Scully and that includes concerts, the issuance of a documentary on the work of the artist recorded in London by director David Trueba or a visit to the motorcycle to the monastery of Montserrat, where Scully decorated the monastery of Santa Celília with a permanent installation called Espai d’Ar Sean Scully. Most of the exposed works come from both the artist’s private collection and the Reina Sofía Museum, of the Institut Valencià d’Art Modern and other institutions and collections.
A great representative of abstraction
Probably the painter and abstract sculptor Sean Scully (Dublin, 1946) is known for the general public by the controversial statements made to The Financial Times in 2019in which he criticized Catalan nationalism and what in his opinion was an attempt to impose the Catalan language, and that occurred two years after the artist left Barcelona after almost 25 years of residence.
However, we are talking about one of the great abstract painters of today; The “greatest active representative of the abstract artistic movement,” according to Javier Molins. It is an artist with a long career that begins in the 60s and continues today, sixty years later, showing an interesting evolution that could be branded from elliptical, since it travels from the initial figurative painting, very influenced by German expressionism, but also for the bright colors of pop artists or other abstract painters such as Howard Hodgkin, until the current new figuration, more concrete but also endowed with minimalism in the profiling.
In between, there are numerous stages that define at the same time the cities where Scully has resided throughout her life: London, Boston, trips through Morocco, New York, Munich or Barcelona. In them he has developed his most minimalist and geometric work at the beginning to evolve later until he finally finds his path in complex, volumetric abstraction and full of color that has characterized him, combining materials such as the canvas with the metal sheet in the paint, and the stone or the tempered and colorful glass in the sculpture.
Scully explains – with a Castilian rather than acceptable although somewhat oxidized after six years away from Spain – by presenting the retrospective to the retrospective about his work, which has always been fixed in a painter like the Renaissance Rafael: “It is in the middle of Miguel Ángel, who is too muscular, and Leonardo, which is too mental, instead, Rafael is a path between both of them. abstract minimalism and figuration ”.
Of the figurative beginnings to minimalism
The exhibition begins with two paintings of his first stage in the 60s in London, in which Scully was influencing German expressionism and the colorist trends of pop art. It also shows a sculpture of that time, made with metal boxes and with a strong symbolism that Scully explains: “They are boxes that were in the postwar period in London, where 12% of the houses had been destroyed; The boxes were used to preserve food and drinking water. ”
Then, and the exhibition goes to the first stage in Boston, a city of which Scully highlights “her beautiful light.” These are geometric abstraction pictures based on cross -linked lines. Scully exemplifies it with EAST COAST LIFE 2a work with red, white and orange oblique lines combined in a braided that, according to the artist, are inspired by the carpets of Morocco.
After the Bostonian stage, Scully shows the works of the first New York period in the 70s. “To make me a place in the artistic circle of abstract artists, I had to submit to minimalism,” he says with a certain sneer. From this time it stands out Black or Black of 1972, a painting that ensures that it took 5 years to finish and that presents a series of horizontal rectilinear paths of different intensities of black.
The release stage
The exhibition then goes to its next stage, which already corresponds to the 80s and in which the artist comments that once integrated into minimalism, he decides to “break it from within the movement.” It is then that we discover the most characteristic Scully works, where he leaves the stroke and line by diffuse bars in the profiling, with more varied colors without becoming acids such as those of the London stage. Paintings also in which the texture of the oil is noted and in which the presence of windows is striking: smaller canvases embedded and with bars in order and different colors.
It is a time of large format boxes in which both canvas and wood and metal surfaces use support; Pictures to which it gives volume with assemblies of several canvases to different relief. In this regard, the painter comments that “they define the time of New York, a very convulsive city, with many dialectical encounters that are reflected in my work.”
But it also stands out regarding the minimalism of the 70s that his works of the following decade “are full of the colors of nature and life that explain my romantic vision of the world.” Additionally, Scully, asked about his works in the monastery of Santa Cecília and in the cathedral of Girona, where he built large stained glass windows, recognizes his religiosity. “I am not of daily mass,” he says, “but I think there is a certain order of things with a perfect personality above, and I think this is reflected in my works.”
The Barcelona stage
The exhibition has some implicit reconciliation of Scully with Barcelona, and is especially embodied in a room dedicated to his work in the Catalan capital. You can find drawings of geometric structures, made with a wet stick in paint, as well as oils and recorded forms.
“In front of New York, which is a city for me with a lot of conceptual force, I feel Barcelona as a much more emotional, sensual, more harmonious space but also with a great intellectual burden,” says Scully. Asked if he would return, now that he resides again in New York, he acknowledges that he keeps a great memory of the study he had at the entrance of the Raval neighborhood, on Joaquin Costa Street. Also of his walks in the area with his friend Manuel Borja-Villel, whom he calls “the Napoleon of the museums.”
But it ensures that it is impossible “because I have a 15 -year -old son who is being educated in English, which now immerses himself in Catalan or Spanish would harm him at this time in his education.” Despite this, he reiterates his special relationship “with Barcelona and Spain in general.” “Here the culture is still taken care of,” he bets and rifles: “It is something that no longer happens in places like London.”
The importance of windows in Scully’s works
The sample Sean Scully It ends with a sample of its cubic sculptures made with different types of rock, from granite to marble, added in the same block. They are normally polished, but the artist points out Small Cubed 3one in which the lacquers of different material overlap in a kind of sandwich from which its rough surface stands out.
“I wanted it to be in the exhibition because the Pedrera is a building designed by Gaudí, who worked a lot the assemblies of different stones and gave much importance to the texture of the surfaces,” says Scully, which declares himself a great admirer of the Catalan architect.
It also includes the sample of large sculptures, such as Venice Stack, 2020 and made with Murano crystal, or opulate Ascension, of 2019 and installed in the Sant Giorgio Maggiore Basilica of Venecia, in line with the Scully Work line in religious centers.
Finally, asked about the symbolism of the mysterious windows in their paintings, in reality paintings embedded in the principal, the author refers to them as “the entry of an element from the outside of the painting, the irruption of something different that establishes a dialogue with the work”. And ensures that the windows are a technique used for many centuries in the painting, for example “in the paintings of the virgins with the child of the Renaissance, in which the Holy Spirit entered through a window.”
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