Sean Scully - 20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale, Afternoon Session New York Wednesday, November 16, 2022 | Phillips
  • "He [Scully] began by braiding the priorities of American Minimalism with the retinal riddles of Op art. The result (including works such as Green Light, 1972-73,…) was an alluring series of complex meshes of deceptive depth conjured by overlapping stripes, intricately woven with the aid of masking tape."
    —Kelly Grovier

    Sean Scully’s Green Light, 1972–1973, is a seminal example from the artist’s early practice, exemplifying the artist’s signature geometric abstraction with the crisp lines and vibrant colors of his early professional work, referred to by the artist as “supergrids.” One of the few early paintings to come to auction, this painting was most recently seen in the artist’s retrospective Sean Scully: The Shape of Ideas, exhibited at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in 2021–2022. 
     
    Green Light comes from the limited period in which Scully engaged with bright colors–by the mid- to late-1970s Scully had turned to monochromes and darker muted palettes–that saw the artist’s first critical acclaim. The virtuosity of Scully’s supergrids was quickly recognized by collectors and critics alike in his breakthrough, sold-out solo exhibition at Juda Rowan Gallery, held the year Green Light was completed. William Feaver, writing for Art International/The Lugano Review identified the young Scully as a major force in the rising generation, announcing, “comparison of his first show with the [Kenneth] Nolands at the Waddington during the summer led me to suspect that a torch may have been laid down and taken up;” he went on to further praise Scully’s adeptness at rendering shadow and distance to create an “a convincing illusory space.”i

    "In all of his best work there’s a sense of straightforward zest; a feeling that the painting is still evolving, still live, as you enjoy it."
    —William Feaver

    Emerging on the international scene in the early 1970s, Scully gained a celebrated reputation as a contrarian painter working in contrast to the prevailing conceptualist art of the era. Scully remained guided by his interest in the emotional potential of painting and abstraction, famously influenced by Mark Rothko’s work from the preceding two decades. The present example also exhibits a particular influence from contemporaneous movements like Op Art, resonating with the work of fellow British artist Bridget Riley, whose vibrant, structured paintings juxtapose color to illusory effect. Another crucial influence was Jesús Rafael Soto, whose work Scully first encountered at the Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1969 on his way home from his impactful and oft-discussed trip to Morocco as a young artist. The influence of Soto’s exploration of positive and negative space in his immersive Penetrables, interactive sculptures composed of rods and nylon ropes, is strongly felt in the development of space and depth in Green Light.
     

    Scully created Green Light during his year in residence at Harvard, having been awarded a Frank Knox Memorial Fellowship, from 1972-1973. In this year the artist travelled frequently to New York, where he found a stronger kinship with the artistic community there than in London. Encountering the emergent Minimalism movement, the young Scully met artists including Robert Ryman and Anne Truitt. Scully was inspired by the energy of the city’s art scene but remained guided by his personal foundational principles on art. Using Green Light as an example, Kelly Grovier has acutely pointed to Scully’s blend of the moment’s non-figurative artistic threads of Minimalism and Op Art. The present work also sees Scully’s influence from the rhythmic poetry and music of Phil Spector and the Velvet Underground in its lattice of bright green, yellow and black. Pulsating with energy, Green Light exemplifies Scully’s 1970s work at its best, combining the abstract, emotional qualities distinctive to the artist’s oeuvre with the complex influences from his early career.

     

    i William Feaver, "Sean Scully," Art International/The Lugano Review, vol. 17, no. 9, November 1973, p. 26

    • Provenance

      Private Collection (acquired directly from the artist)
      Private Collection (thence by descent from the above)
      Bonhams, New York, May 16, 2018, lot 19
      Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

    • Exhibited

      Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Sean Scully: The Shape of Ideas, June 20, 2021–July 31, 2022, pp. 77, 91 (illustrated, p. 91)

    • Literature

      Philip Kennicott, "Abstraction seemed a dust bowl, but Sean Scully made it bloom again," The Washington Post, May 27, 2022, online (illustrated)
      Raphy Sarkissian, "Sean Scully: The Shape of Ideas," The Brooklyn Rail, June 2022, online (illustrated)
      Rebecca Allan, "Sean Scully's painting takes geometric abstraction into a realm that is both emotional and philosophical," Art and Antiques, 2022, online (illustrated)

348

Green Light

signed "Sean Scully" on the reverse
acrylic on canvas
96 x 127 in. (243.8 x 322.6 cm)
Painted in 1972–1973.

This work will be included in the artist's forthcoming catalogue raisonné being prepared by Dr. Marla Price.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$250,000 - 350,000 

Sold for $315,000

Contact Specialist

Patrizia Koenig
Specialist, Head of Day Sale, Afternoon Session
+1 212 940 1279
pkoenig@phillips.com

20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale, Afternoon Session

New York Auction 16 November 2022