The fruit of a gift from the artist that completes the Centre Pompidou’s collection, the exhibition ‘The colored geometry of Sean Scully’ covers the entire career of the painter Sean Scully, from the early 1970s to his most recent works. Scully’s romantic ambition was to ‘make visible what we feel’, and to distance himself critically from the rigour of abstraction by favouring rhythm over form, through a singularly complex and nuanced use of colour.

Michel Gauthier, curator of the Musée d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, writes:

‘Sean Scully is widely recognized for his broad, colorful bands, often segmented and with vibrant edges, that structure his frequently large-format paintings. This visual language, developed in the 1980s and refined over the subsequent decades, has earned Scully’s work significant international acclaim. The exhibition at the Centre Pompidou is notable for juxtaposing some of these iconic paintings with works from the 1970s and early 1980s. (…) 

If there is one aspect of Scully’s painting that most clearly rejects literalism and self-referentiality, it is undoubtedly his use of color. Over time, his colors have become increasingly nuanced and complex, leading to the chromatic achievements of the last two decades, as seen in works like Doric Sky (2011), Landline Far (2020), and Plough (2023). These works solidify Scully’s reputation as one of the greatest colorists of our time. Each band of color in his paintings contains multiple shades within itself.

“I seek to make what we feel visible”, Scully says, echoing the spirit of Cézanne, in whose city he plans to spend more and more time. (…) Scully’s painting is similar to Cézanne primarily because it is conceived as a painting of sensation. He presents his canvases as, in a sense, “unresolved.” Only the sensations, emotions, and feelings that arise within the viewer can bring them to resolution.’ 

Centre Georges Pompidou
Level 4, Room 24