HAMBURG.- In celebration of his 80th birthday, the Bucerius Kunst Forum presents a comprehensive retrospective of the artist Sean Scully. The exhibition features artworks spanning over six decades of his career. In addition to Scully's large-scale paintings, the exhibition displays works on paper, sculptures, and photographs.


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Scully's best-known works are large paintings on which he applies multiple layers of oil paint, creating a striking, tactile texture. Along with the heavy application of paint and broad brushstrokes, his works are distinguished by their large scale and checkerboard patterns. In the exhibition, his iconic paintings are displayed alongside discoveries and experiments, including his photographies created since the 1960s. Visitors can expect a journey through the decades, illustrating how an artist's career evolves in response to personal turning points, political developments, and artistic trends. The retrospective format highlights how Scully continuously explores new forms of expression: Whereas he painted figuratively in the 1960s, depicting recognizable objects, places, and people, he eventually became one of the most important non-representational artists of today through his involvement with the hard-edge movement and sharply defined areas of colour.


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Alongside his well-known paintings, the exhibition presents several rediscovered works, especially from his early career, which have rarely been ex- hibited before.

Combined with stories and anecdotes about his works, the show demonstrates that, despite its non-representational nature, Scully's art is far from inaccessible. By telling stories it evokes emotions and memories in the viewer. Visitors will encounter childhood memories, the artist’s personal experiences of key political events, and impressions from his travels. Scully's themes are marked by deep melancholy, great joy, and poetic and philosophical reflections on the human condition, including experiences of loss and longing. The exhibition combines art, personal notes by Scully, numerous explanations and sound, offering the opportunity to experience non representational painting through personal stories and emotional connections.

Scully reinterprets abstraction, as for him, nothing is truly abstract. His works are expressions of self-perception, reflecting an inner state. This is why Scully continues to paint over his pieces, giving them new meaning — a process that is also explored in the exhibition. His photographs of house facades, landscapes, and architectural structures reveal the visual sources of his inspiration. In the exhibition, the abstract nature of his oversized works is paired with images of real places, providing an associative guide for the viewer.

Sean Scully was born in Dublin in 1945 and raised in the south of London. He now lives and works between New York, London, and Mooseurach in the south of Germany. His connection to Germany was primarily shaped by his role as a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich from 2002 to 2007. Over his more than six decades of creative work, Scully has participated in numerous exhibitions. Vertical and horizontal bands of colour have served as the recurring foundation of his works, a structure he continually revisits using various techniques and materials. Initially, he used adhesive tape to create precise striped edges. In the 1980s however, he moved away from this precision and began painting freehanded. The multiple layers of paint and visible brushstrokes are clearly visible in his pieces. In 2014, Scully became the first Western, non-representational artist to have a dedicated retrospective in China. He was made a member of the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 2013 and has received honorary doctorates from several institutions. His work is part of many prestigious permanent collections, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

In addition to two freely accessible sculptures in the atrium, the artist's work Air Cage will be installed in front of the exhibition building on Alter Wall. This installation not only makes Scully's art visible but also invites visitors to linger in Hamburg's city centre. The outdoor sculpture is part of the pilot project within the Hamburg initiative „Verborgene Potenziale - Gemeinschaftliche Entwicklung der Nutzungsvielfalt für eine lebendige und resiliente Hamburger Innenstadt“, funded by the Zukunftsfähige Innenstädte und Zentren program of the Federal Ministry of Housing, Urban Development, and Building.



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