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Lot Essay
Sean Scully's Wall of Light Diego exemplifies the artist’s signature synthesis of the bold color and brushwork of Abstract Expressionism with the formal geometric abstraction of 1960s Minimalism. This work is a refined example of Sean Scully's career-defining Wall of Light series, showcasing a lyrical exploration of light, color, and form. The composition is dominated by large, rectangular blocks of subdued hues—rich browns, luminous grays, and blooming pinks—that create a dynamic visual rhythm. The interplay of these colors evokes a sense of warmth and depth, while the ordered rectangles suggest the influence of architecture and sculpture on Scully’s painting. Scully's characteristically energetic brushwork adds a textural dimension, enhancing the tactile feel of the painting. The horizontal and vertical divisions create a playful sense of movement, bringing energy and personality to basic, elemental geometric forms. Pink and red hues glow like embers from beneath painterly swaths of earthy browns and blacks, alighting the composition from within and luring the viewer into a mode of quiet contemplation.
“I can’t exactly explain it, but seeing the Mexican ruins, the stacking of the stones, and the way the light hit those facades, had something to do with it, maybe everything to do with it.” Sean Scully
Stemming from a formative 1983 trip to Mexico, Scully’s Wall of Light series was inspired by his impressions of the ruins of precolonial Mayan architecture. Watching the play of light on the ancient stones, Scully first envisioned his series’ rich exploration of the geometry and pure color of rectangles. “I can’t exactly explain it, but seeing the Mexican ruins, the stacking of the stones, and the way the light hit those facades, had something to do with it, maybe everything to do with it” (S. Scully, quoted in M. Auping, No Longer a Wall, New York, 2005, p. 24). For Scully, the wall is the elemental home of all painting, and his Wall of Light paintings problematize the distinction between the flat and the three-dimensional, conflating the figure and the ground. The title of the series itself is contradictory; it describes a transparent, permeable boundary, or a concrete atmosphere. The canvas itself is vast; at over 7 feet tall and over 6 feet wide, the painting has a real physical presence in space. The scale of the painting causes it to embody many of the qualities of an architectural feature or wall, and its constituent rectangles take on the visual properties of the ancient brickwork that first inspired Scully. The nuanced, organic color palette of Wall of Light Diego evokes the soft play of light on monumental stonework at dusk, reminiscent of ancient, timeless evenings.
Scully has often cited early Abstract Expressionist and Color Field painters as major influences on his work. He draws on the work of artists like Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko, especially in his focus on elemental forms and layered hues. Writing on Rothko in Art in America in 1993, Scully drew a through-line between the influence of architecture and the influence of Rothko’s fields of atmospheric paint on his work: "The figure and the ground, the sky and the sea, as well as all the experiences the artist has lived and all the stories he would like to tell are distilled into rectangles that have the solemnity of Stonehenge” (S. Scully, “Bodies of Light,” Art in America, July 1999, pg. 17). In Scully’s Wall of Light Diego, rectangles and fields of pure color take on both the intangible quality of the artist’s interiority and the solidity of prehistoric stonework. His Wall of Light series simultaneously pays tribute to, and expands upon, Mark Rothko’s iconic blocks of layered paint.
Formative encounters with the work of Minimalist artists such as the English painter Bridget Riley likewise strongly influenced the young Scully, whose work from the 1970s onward has often been described as a romantic response to the strict geometries of the Minimalists—an attempt to reconcile their purity of form with the emotional lyricism of the Abstract Expressionist and Impressionist painters.
Notably, a number of eminent Minimalists were also inspired by the architecture of Mexico. Artists including Josef and Anni Albers, Donald Judd, and Robert Smithson all created bodies of work responding directly to the elemental forms of both Mexican ruins and contemporary vernacular Mexican building. Like Scully, both the Alberses and Smithson, in particular, responded strongly to the primeval landscapes of the Yucatan Peninsula, creating photo series that explored the relationship between Mexico’s topography and both pre-Columbian and contemporary architecture. Ancient Mexican architecture was especially influential for Josef Albers, whose iconic Homage to the Square and Variant / Adobe series were directly inspired by the dynamic geometry of pre-Columbian structures. This link between Mexican architectural forms and geometric abstraction likewise finds a powerful expression in Scully’s Wall of Light Diego.
Wall of Light Diego masterfully combines the bold, expressive color of Abstract Expressionism with the structured geometry of Minimalism. Blocks of warm, suggestive colors evoke both the solidity of stone and the depth of the artists’ lived experience. His painterly brushwork and the scale of the piece bring a tactile, almost architectural presence to Wall of Light Diego, blurring the line between structure and spirit in a profound tribute to the enduring visual language of human culture.
“I can’t exactly explain it, but seeing the Mexican ruins, the stacking of the stones, and the way the light hit those facades, had something to do with it, maybe everything to do with it.” Sean Scully
Stemming from a formative 1983 trip to Mexico, Scully’s Wall of Light series was inspired by his impressions of the ruins of precolonial Mayan architecture. Watching the play of light on the ancient stones, Scully first envisioned his series’ rich exploration of the geometry and pure color of rectangles. “I can’t exactly explain it, but seeing the Mexican ruins, the stacking of the stones, and the way the light hit those facades, had something to do with it, maybe everything to do with it” (S. Scully, quoted in M. Auping, No Longer a Wall, New York, 2005, p. 24). For Scully, the wall is the elemental home of all painting, and his Wall of Light paintings problematize the distinction between the flat and the three-dimensional, conflating the figure and the ground. The title of the series itself is contradictory; it describes a transparent, permeable boundary, or a concrete atmosphere. The canvas itself is vast; at over 7 feet tall and over 6 feet wide, the painting has a real physical presence in space. The scale of the painting causes it to embody many of the qualities of an architectural feature or wall, and its constituent rectangles take on the visual properties of the ancient brickwork that first inspired Scully. The nuanced, organic color palette of Wall of Light Diego evokes the soft play of light on monumental stonework at dusk, reminiscent of ancient, timeless evenings.
Scully has often cited early Abstract Expressionist and Color Field painters as major influences on his work. He draws on the work of artists like Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko, especially in his focus on elemental forms and layered hues. Writing on Rothko in Art in America in 1993, Scully drew a through-line between the influence of architecture and the influence of Rothko’s fields of atmospheric paint on his work: "The figure and the ground, the sky and the sea, as well as all the experiences the artist has lived and all the stories he would like to tell are distilled into rectangles that have the solemnity of Stonehenge” (S. Scully, “Bodies of Light,” Art in America, July 1999, pg. 17). In Scully’s Wall of Light Diego, rectangles and fields of pure color take on both the intangible quality of the artist’s interiority and the solidity of prehistoric stonework. His Wall of Light series simultaneously pays tribute to, and expands upon, Mark Rothko’s iconic blocks of layered paint.
Formative encounters with the work of Minimalist artists such as the English painter Bridget Riley likewise strongly influenced the young Scully, whose work from the 1970s onward has often been described as a romantic response to the strict geometries of the Minimalists—an attempt to reconcile their purity of form with the emotional lyricism of the Abstract Expressionist and Impressionist painters.
Notably, a number of eminent Minimalists were also inspired by the architecture of Mexico. Artists including Josef and Anni Albers, Donald Judd, and Robert Smithson all created bodies of work responding directly to the elemental forms of both Mexican ruins and contemporary vernacular Mexican building. Like Scully, both the Alberses and Smithson, in particular, responded strongly to the primeval landscapes of the Yucatan Peninsula, creating photo series that explored the relationship between Mexico’s topography and both pre-Columbian and contemporary architecture. Ancient Mexican architecture was especially influential for Josef Albers, whose iconic Homage to the Square and Variant / Adobe series were directly inspired by the dynamic geometry of pre-Columbian structures. This link between Mexican architectural forms and geometric abstraction likewise finds a powerful expression in Scully’s Wall of Light Diego.
Wall of Light Diego masterfully combines the bold, expressive color of Abstract Expressionism with the structured geometry of Minimalism. Blocks of warm, suggestive colors evoke both the solidity of stone and the depth of the artists’ lived experience. His painterly brushwork and the scale of the piece bring a tactile, almost architectural presence to Wall of Light Diego, blurring the line between structure and spirit in a profound tribute to the enduring visual language of human culture.