Sean Scully is a world-renowned contemporary artist. His art intervention at Santa Cecilia de Montserrat consists of six large murals and eight stained-glass paintings. With this gift, the artist wanted to demonstrate his friendship towards the Monastery of Montserrat. The community means a lot to him because of its faith and spirituality, activity in favour of culture, love of art and music, and commitment to human rights and freedom.
Sean Scully’s highly personal style
In the early 80s, Sean Scully already showed a very personal style, which still defines and characterizes his work, and has become deepened and refined over the years. Previously, he had experimented for several years, always in connection with the contemporary avant-garde. His expressive language consists of organized, coloured frames, architecturally arranged, usually horizontally. He creates rhythms and chromatic cadences, variables to infinity, with wisely chosen, vibrant colours that are brilliantly worked, obtained through the use of overlapping colour layers.
The artist notes that his painting has a profound physical component, from which he creates geometric abstraction. He paints from what he has lived and that which constitutes the deepest layers of his life: his native Ireland, with its terraced and divided fields; the Irish margins with juxtaposed dry stones; and, finally, the background to suburban life: peeling walls, fences, and series of old, degraded windows and doors. His latest painting also shows a strong metaphysical and spiritual dimension that transcends the superficiality of the visible world. He loves reality without destroying it, but with the desire to go always beyond, in a passionate and emotional dream: “Abstraction”, Scully often says, “is the spiritual art of our time”.
It is difficult to label his style and fit it into a specific school, but if we had to place it in the complex landscape of contemporary art, we could say that Sean Scully’s art lies between abstract expressionism and geometrical conceptual art, as well as minimalism, because of the essential simplicity of his style.
© Photos: Raül Maigí / Museum of Montserrat