Sean Scully

Landline Blue, 2014 #2

Landline Blue, 2014 #1

Aquatint, spit bite and sugar lift on paper, with book
Sheet size 55.90 x 43.20 cm
Image size 31.80 x 25.40 cm
Signed and numbered
Edition of 30 + 10 AP


“With every painting Sean Scully seems to start all over again, while risking everything. . . . Here, each new painting is a surprise, an assertion of color without any presuppositions, which assails the viewer with an unusual vehemence,” wrote Hans-Joachim Müller for DIE WELT. For decades the Irish-American artist has been employing a strictly reduced repertoire of forms—lines, stripes, and blocks—to create a multiplicity of abstract compositions with remarkably sensual and emotional qualities. The works achieve this effect first of all through the direct brushwork: wet on wet, Scully applies the paint to the canvas, mainly using large bristle brushes—and second, through the hand drawn, irregular contours of the individual stripes that allow the layers of paint beneath to shine through. “My paintings show structure, but with feeling,” Scully has said about his work.

Scully’s works of art are in the collections of the most important museums around the world, and they fetch the highest of prices on the art market. After the first Hatje-Cantz Edition by the renowned artist sold out quickly, we are very pleased to be able to once again offer you a new Collector’s Edition. It is a thoroughly appealing aquatint etching—a so-called reservage, which has been treated with solutions of sugar and gum Arabic.